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BOOKS BY
MARY HEATON VORSE

Tor PRESTONS

GRowInG Up
Tue Ninto Man

MEN AND STEEL

BY

MARY HEATON VORSE

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MEN AND STEEL

Copyright, 1920, by
Bont & Livertieut, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

*

PART I. STRIKE BACKGROUND

THE PRINCIPALITY OF STEEL Be We aad a tiy ae Gea
The Industry. Ore Mines. Coal, Coke and Carriers.
Steel Corporation Profits.

Stren Mrs... Sa a ir ea
The Mills. Poured ee ame Steel. Open Hearth Fur-
nace. Blooming Mill. Wire Mill. Skull Cracker. Wages
and Hours.

Men AND MACHINES ME Ae re ALO RW hr th © ae DA
Spring in the Steel Towns. Men Going to Work. Fray-
car. The Mad Gunner.

STEEL Towns. . .

Braddock. Slack. Flag of Bok. Pittsburgh, Youngs-
town. New Steel Towns.

Steet Masters AND LaBor

Old Organizations. Freedom and Welfare. National
Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers.
Strike Demands. The President’s Conference. Laughter
of Europe. “What Meaneth a Tyrant.”

PART II. THE STEEL STRIKE

STRIKE AND STRIKE LEADERS . aT A tage
Scope of Strike. W.Z. Foster. Some Organizers.

VIOLENCE . oh Mak Gain ayo ah a ee
Constabulary in Sahl. The Brutality of Power.
Foster’s Office. Fanny Sellings. Third Degree. Rank
and File.
Strike MEETINGS TFs MO SS eh SU rer eee Ma Ae
Meetings in Pittsburgh. Father Kazinci’s Church.
Meeting in Homestead. Marching Men. Youngstown
Strikers.
Vv

PAGH
11

18

27

32

43

57

63

73

vl

CHAPTER
IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XITT.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.

XIX.

Conients

SENATORS AND STEEL WORKERS arava
The Senate Investigation. Bullied Won: Outside
Arrests. Docile Steel Workers. Americanizers.
OutTsIpE PEOPLE .

The Comfortable epi The Convention. Quiet
Towns.

PART III. SILENCE

Dark Towns. wa Ng Rg tia a RM Ts Rea
Mother Jones. Steubenville. The Meeting in Mingo.
Weirton. Pensions. Tamo Daleko. Johnstown.
SILENCE Do AS AS | SR et ee er
The Miner’s Son. The Smothered Strike. What Every-
one Knew. English Workers. Publicity Department.
Letter from Alabama. Espionage.

CoMMISSARY gO PRE SEE GOR gi has
Pittsburgh Workers. The Strike Woman. Commissary
in Braddock. Strike Relief Money. Meaning of Sirikes.
ANONYMoUs PEOPLE .

The Strike Baby. Old Couns Childiees: Rede
Measles. The Contented Woman. How They Came
Here.

PART IV. THE DYING STRIKE

Tun BREAK 2: |. oy ee
The Mills Are Pried ‘Ope The Youngstown Office.
Picket Line. Steel Workers’ Children. Why Men Strike.
Fighting Women.

Waitt TERROR PRET IO Te CS De
Johnstown Mobs. Youngstown Arrests. The Scab.
Thanksgiving at Dinora.

Tue Dying STRIKE .

The Funeral. The Federal Raids. The Last Days. The
End.

STRIKE DERELICTS : jE A ee
Scrapped. The Riddle’s Ae. Life-Long Protest.
Old Strikers. Derelicts.

ALIENS .

Boy Without a Omid: “suites ‘Chitseas A work.
er’s Story. They Want to Go Home. They Will Wait.

PAGE

82

91

99

110

120

130

141

152

160 .

168

176

PART ONE
IKE BACKGROUND

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MEN AND STEEL

CHAPTER I

THE PRINCIPALITY OF STEEL

RINCIPALITIES in America do not exist as geo-
P graphical areas. In America principalities exist by
industries.

The principality of Steel is young. It has the despotism
and the power of youth; its power rests only on wealth
and dominion. Power without responsibility. Power
which throttles among its subjects all efforts at self-
government. Power brutal, young, riotous, lusty, driven
by the force of steam. Power which treats men’s lives as
commodities. A creative thing made of fire and‘iron and
taking no account of the lives of men. Smoke, fire, iron
and human lives are its substance. Gain and greed and
the sullen discontent of men are the stuff from which
this unthinking despotism is made.

The men who have iron prevail. The iron masters have
always had power. The smiths have always been the
aristocrats of the artisans. America of the Indians might
yet dispute the civilization of Europe, as does North
11

12 Men and Steel

Africa, had the Indians had iron. Iron and Steel began
the life of moderns. Iron and Steel still rule.

No industry is as imposing as Steel, no industry so
knocks at the door of the imagination. There must have
been a time when that piece of molten metal made from a
stone seemed magic; it still is so.

The magic has grown.

The might of Steel has increased.

This industry has progressed mightily. There is no
prouder achievement in American industry than Steel.
In manufacture of Steel we surpass the world. Sheffield
is an old man in his dotage. Newcastle sleeps. Pittsburgh
is To-day making To-morrow.

The steel towns make all the raw stuff of life as we
know it. Here are our great forges. Here is the core of
our civilization. They make steel cars in Lyndora. They
make rails in Monessen. In all the world there are no
such tubing works as in Youngstown and McKeesport.

In the steel towns they make the raw material for all the
swift moving things; the wheels of great machines, the
engines which move trains and vessels and airships, the
frame-work of high buildings. Our civilization is forged
in the steel towns. |

A rampart of mills lines the river bottoms near all. steel
towns. These mills stretch in a mighty frieze miles long.
The men who go in mornings and come out nights, who go
in nights and come out mornings, seem like processions
of ants.

Smoke belches perpetually from the black mill chimneys,

The Principality of Steel 13

which rise like the pipes of black organs, three chimneys,
five chimneys, seven chimneys in a row. Chimney and fur-
nace follow one another along the rivers.

The fires of these mills burn night and day. Night and
day steel is made by the men who live huddled around the
flanks of the mills.

Through the work of these men Pittsburgh grew strong
and built high towers. Town after town made steel; one
mill bred another. Youngstown, Johnstown, Wheeling,
Steubenville made steel and iron, or things that were made
from steel and iron.

Steel grew powerful and great. Steel blackened the
skies of South Chicago; Steel built Gary and the towns in
Calumet Basin. Steel was made in Joliet; Allentown grew
rich on Steel, and Steel was made in Colorado and
Alabama.

A great industry flung itself across a _ continent.
Through the ceaseless energy of the steel masters and
through the unfailing faithfulness of the men who went
to the mills every morning and every night, a principality
was built. |

If these men stopped working our civilization would
stop. Between them coal and iron hold America in their
hands. Coal and iron and steel rule our civilization and
are its masters.

14 Men and Steel
Ore Mines

They make steel from piles of red dust—the crushed
ore. These are the places where the iron-ore comes from:

Marquette
Menominee
_ Gogebic
Vermilion
- Mesaba

It is like a song. Much of the ore from which they
make fine steel comes from Mesaba. The Mesaba range-
is a crescent of towns and mines flung over sixty miles of
pit-scarred country, open pits yawning, open pits half a
mile across, red as dried blood, pits so deep that the en-
gines crawling up their flanks look like beetles. Pits the
color of burnt umber, streaked with rust, streaked with
yellow. Around the pits forest fires have left the charred
stumps of great trees. Among the burnt stumps are
bowlders strewn there by glaciers. There are nine beau-
tiful towns and fifty bleak “locations” squatting about the’
flanks of the mines.

When I was on the Mesaba Range there was a strike.
At that time I saw drunken gunmen wearing the stars —
of deputy sheriffs guarding company property. These
were on Indian Reservation where no drink is allowed. -

There were no houses in this location, only cabins made
from logs and the sides of square oil cans. There were

The Principality of Steel 15

no streets in this town. The cabins were placed hap-
hazard among stumps and bowlders. The company owned
the single pump. The company owned the land under
the cabins. Refuse lay where it fell, and hogs rooted in it.
But the women who stood at the doorways were wide-
bosomed and clean. Their curtains in the windows were
clean and they grew flowers from tin cans. I saw one
cabin which had a piece of stained glass above the door.

Past the cabins went the drunken gunmen; one held him-
self up on the arm of the other and shouted:

“TI don’t know if I’m coming or going. I don’t know
if it’s night or morning.”

They saw me and cursed at me foully. On this location
two Italians had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment
for bringing red wine here to drink at table.

‘16 Men and Steel
Coal, Coke and Carriers

From the Mesaba mines railways take the ore to Duluth.
Long, ungainly ore boats ferry it across the lakes. These
rails and these boats are owned and controlled by the iron
masters.

They are digging coal to smelt this ore in Pennsylvania.
As you go through the country you cannot forget coal,
you cannot forget that underneath the earth men work
night and day.

In Connelsville the woke ovens burn with red licking
fires to make coke for the blast. They burn night
and day.

At night the river runs red where it passes Connelegtiie

The steel masters own and control the iron mines. The
coal and coke to smelt the ore they own and control.

All these things—the mines, the railways and the boats
—belong to those who own the ramparts of the mills.
They also own the men who work in the mills. But if the
men mining coal and making steel stopped, then life ag,
we know it would cease. |

The Principality of Steel 17
Profits

About one half of the steel industry is owned by the
U. S. Steel Corporation. These are the figures of the
Corporation’s surplus:

1913 Total undivided surplus .......... $151,798,428.89
1914 Total undivided surplus .......... 135,204,471.90
1915 Total undivided surplus .......... 180,025 ,328.74
1916 Total undivided surplus .......... 381,360,913.37
1917 Total undivided surplus .......... 431 ,660,803.63
1918 Total undivided surplus .......... 466,888,421.38
1919 Total undivided surplus .......... 493,048 ,201.93

Compared with the wage budgets in 1918, the Corpora-
tion’s final surplus after paying dividends of $96,382,027
and setting aside $174,277,835 for Federal taxes payable
in 1919, was $466,888,421—a sum large enough to have
paid a second time the total wage and salary budget for
1918 ($452,663,524), and to have left a surplus of over
$14,000,000. In 1919 the undivided surplus was $493,-
048,201.93, or $13,000,000 more than the total wage and
' salary expenditures.*

-* Interchurch Report of Steel Strike.

CHAPTER II

STEEL MILLS

N the steel towns the mills are surrounded by high)
walls. The gates are guarded by uniformed guards,|
You must have a permit to go in. A man may live|

years in steel towns and see no more of the mills than)
smoke and steam.

The yards of the steel mills are surrounded by tracks.
Engines puff up and down through the twenty-four hours.
Mountains of ore, mountains of coke, trains unloading,
scrap engines unloading ore and coke, trains carrying off
steel bars. Magnets everywhere are loading and unload-
ing steel ingots into cars. Men moving in unhurried fash-
ion. No one moves rapidly; every one has time. There is
a never-ending quality to all this.

The size, the leisure, the intensity of the fires and the
furnaces give the illusion of ritual. Rooms as high as the.
apse of a cathedral, with a core of molten-metal furnace,
poured steel, red hot steel bars. Through the gloom
shafts of. blue light from outside, shafts of sunlight solid
as searchlights, while little unhurried men, small men
whose presence is scarcely observed, are standing on plat-
forms pulling levers.

18

Steel Mills . 19

Three things impress you when you go into the mills:
the size, the absence of men, the absence of haste. Here
a tremendous work is in progress. Here is being manu-
factured the steel skeleton of our monstrous civilization.
Here before your eyes you may see it being made from
fire and iron with the help of great machines. That is
what you think first.

Later you say, “Ob, men are helping too!” This is an
after-thought.

20 Men and Steel

(
Poured Iron and Steel

There is no glory comparable to poured iron or poured
steel. The gushing out of fiery metal from a great wheel-
like container seems like the beginning of Creation. This
black container of molten iron is twenty feet high. A
ladle advances on an overhead railway. It travels to the
container of molten iron. It moves forward on its track
and then laterally and then down. The black container
swings around slowly on its axle as a man presses a lever.

Then follows the sudden magnificence of poured metal.
Like giant fireworks, a thousand sparks fly from it, a
river of white fire throwing off cascades of stars, a fiery
shower on all sides. On a greasy platform above the ladle
are the men who operate it. They look down with indiffer-
ence into its seething deadly brightness.

My guide said: “A man fell into that once, and they
buried him and all the tons of metal. Right here they
held the burial service.”

The story of the man who fell into the vat of molten
metal and became part of it obsesses the men’s minds. I
have heard it told in different ways.

They tell you of a man made into iron rails, of another
who went into the structure of great buildings.

This story is as old as time. There was a great bell
once which was cast and re-cast and would not ring true
until a human being was sacrificed to it.

Steel Mills 74
Open-Hearth Furnace

Very slowly, with caution as though afraid of spilling
its contents, the ladle moves on its track, away from the
container. It moves laterally to the open-hearth furnace.
A gigantic hook descends from above as though of its own
intelligence. It hooks itself under the rim of the ladle;
the door of the furnace lifts up. You look in into the intol-
erable white glare. The red flames seem dark. The red
flames seem to be the brothers of smoke, beside the white
incandescence of the molten mass that will become steel.

I would rather see steel poured than hear a great orches-
tra. The furious hallelujah of the blast furnace gives you
the impression of sound.

When you stare at the glory of the open furnace and
see.the molten metal giving forth its shower of sparks,
you are witnessing creation. Worlds have been made
with the intolerable glory of fire. In this fashion, too, our
modern world has been created.

The ladle of iron pours crackling into the open-hearth
furnace. Before the furnace are mounds of manganese
and of other metals of which the steel is made. I asked
an old Welsh steel worker: “What is in steel?”

He stamped his foot on the earth. “Everything in that
is steel,” he said. ‘There is naught you wouldn’t find in
steel.’’ It seemed to him that it was a cosmic creation.

Force is confined in these furnaces; from one moment to.
another it may escape its bounds, from one moment to
another fire may cease to be docile to men’s wills, fire will

22 Men and Steel

destroy instead of create. It does destroy. Steel falls
where there is water and explodes. Furnaces explode.
The steel towns are full of tales of disaster, and as though
in warning, the men’s clothes are speckled with burns from
glancing sparks of poured metal. You are forever con-
scious that this force working for man is trying to escape.

In many steel mills all that human ingenuity can
do to prevent disaster has been done. There are two facts
against which no safety device can guard: fire burns, and

men forget.

Steel Mills | 23
Blooming Mill

The red ingots weighing a ton are carried deliberately
on the moving track, from soaking pit to blooming mill.
The mill is lofty and dark and the fiery metal is like a
red eye. The red-eyed ingot, the green spitting fire of the
lever, are the only light things in the twilight. Blue light
from an opening in the roof pours down solid like a cur-
tain and shuts off the vista of the mill.

The man on the platform pushes a lever; the hot steel
bar is hurled forward and crashes beneath the roller.
Bristling iron tongues, like iron fingers, turn it over. The
man pushes the lever and unchains the force that carries
the steel bar back. It seems like a tortured thing. There
is anguish in the force that compresses the great bar of
glowing steel. Again it is dashed forward and again the
steel fingers turn it over. The force here unchained is so
great that it holds an element of terror.

The roar of the blooming mill and of the rolling mill,
the hum of machinery, the crackling and spitting of the
electric levers never stop. So constant is the noise that
it gives the effect of quiet.

Poured iron, open-hearth furnace, poured steel, soaking
pit, blooming mill, rolling mill, gray steel still smoking
hot, bars of steel piled ready for use—this is the sequence
of the mill which goes on night and day like some process
of nature. It seems too inevitable to be man’s invention.
The little slow men seem the servants of the great forces
of fire and iron.

24 Men and Steel
Wire Mill

Wire is lengthened by running rapidly in long loops over
pegs. It forms streaks of fire that seem to move of their
own volition—fiery snakes, writhing and leaping, running
on endlessly forever. They daze you as they rush before
you. It does not seem possible that these things are not
alive.

Behind is the gloomy mill, in front brilliant moving wire.
Slow moving laborers pass with loaded barrows; they seem
hypnotized by monotony, by the leaping red _ serpents.
Without stopping, this thin line of fire runs on night and
day; night and day men tend them in their courses. This
thin, long line of writhing red fire is one of the most beau-
tiful things in the world—a leaping ribbon of flame, yard
on yard of it, looping and twisting. This happy, leaping,
running, twisting, flame-colored wire makes iron fences
when it is cold.

Steel Mills 25
The Skull Cracker

Behind the walls of the same steel mill are the skull-
cracker and the wire mill.

I found the skull-cracker by chance down the end of a
muddy lane one spring day. It was at the very end of the
mill. A narrow railway track runs to it and brings pieces
of steel refuse to be cracked over and fed back into the
furnaces.

These great fragments of gray steel look old as time;
they look like pieces of extinct worlds. They look as
though they must have been fused in the heart of some
long extinct volcano. It does not seem possible that they
were made only yesterday in the furnaces above. They
are unloaded from the car, which brings them by a huge
circular magnet. The magnet reaches over and touches
the fragment of gray metal and places it where it wishes.
The current is turned on again and the magnet touches a
sphere of steel weighing five tons, and draws it up forty
feet in the air; the current is turned off and the steel
sphere falls upon the fragment below and cracks it.

It looks like some strange game—the magnet picking up
the gray ball, dropping it and then picking it up, and load-
ing and unloading the steel.

The skull-cracker is in a little yard by itself, out of
doors. There are three men in the crew. The craneman
pulls the levers which work the great crane to which the
magnet is attached, the laborer does what manual work
there is, and the foreman looks on.

26 Men and Steel
Wages and Hours

_ The United States Steel Corporation’s policy as regards
labor dominates the steel industry.

There are, roughly speaking, 500,000 steel workers in
the United States. |

191,000 employees work in U. S. Steel Corporation’s
manufacturing plants.

32% do not make enough pay to come to the level set
by Government experts as minimum subsistence standard
for family of five.

72% of all steel workers are below the level set by
Government experts as minimum of comfort level set for
families of five. That means that three-quarters of the
steel workers cannot earn enough for an American stand-
ard of living. |

50% of the U. S. Steel Corporation’s employees work
12 hours a day. 50% of these work 7 days a week.

Steel workers work from 20 to 40 hours longer a week
than other basic industries near steel communities.

American steel workers work over 20 hours a week
longer than British steel workers.*

*Interchurch Report of Steel Strike. v 2

CHAPTER III

MEN AND MACHINES
Spring in a Steel Town

| ROM the skull-cracker and out of the mill I walked

through muddy unpaved lanes, past unlovely lit-

tered yards of workers’ houses. Only the foreman

of the skull-cracker had made a small garden behind the

mill gate. One young Slovak was digging to plant things
in front of his frame cottage.

The mills of this town were on the flat river bottom.
The old river banks mount steeply. The yards of the
rickety frame houses slope sharply down. Melting snow
had uncovered the refuse of winter. In the air was the

sickly sweet smell of rotting garbage. The steep yards

were surrounded by ramshackle fences. At the bottom
near the street heavier things had slipped down hill—
discarded bed springs, coal scuttles with holes in them,
rusty pots and pans, old corsets, shoes, and more tin
cans. In these towns on the Monongahela refuse and
garbage are not taken away. For months it rots where it
lies. Spring finds it there.

In my country there is a dreary spot which we call the

27

28 Men and Steel

town dump. Here it seems that the children of Lazarus
have been keeping house.

There are disabled cook-stoves, old beds leaking their
entrails, ruined cook pots, ruined scuttles, ruined buckets.
Old hats, old corsets and old shoes. Little boys with
wheel-barrows come and throw away things down the dump
which is over the steep side of a dune.

Spring uncovers thousands of such places in the steel
towns.

Order for the machines; disorder for the men who
tend them. Man’s affairs are dwarfed outside the mills as
men are dwarfed in the mills.

On one hillside was a single irregular patch of green.
Some hopeful soul beside the foreman of the skull-cracker
had planted a garden in the midst of the tin cans and
refuse. There was the only sign of spring in that town.

Men and Machines 29
Men Going to Work

The steel workers were streaming from the mills. Night
and morning the streets of all steel towns are black with
steel workers swarming up from the river bottom, stream-
ing down the hillsides. They come on trolleys—special
ears bring the steel workers. The men going to work
walk with their heads down. They lurch as if heavy
with sleep. They walk fast; they don’t talk; they look |
neither to the right nor to the left, but with heads down
they plunge forward as though the mill gates sucked
them in.

They meet the shift coming off. The men are worn with
fatigue and their eyes are hollow, but they chat together. .
They are going home to food and to bed.

Men coming, men going. Day shift, night shift. Ten
hours light, fourteen night. This procession is punctual
as the tide. It never stops. It goes in every morning, it
comes out every night. Like the sun, like the tides, it
knows neither holiday nor Sunday.

It does not seem as if men owned the mills. It seems as
if the mills owned the men. The mill gates open up in the
morning and suck the men in and at night they open up
again and spew them out. As you go through towns this
idea becomes an obsession.

30 Men and Steel

Fraycar

There was a man named Fraycar who, when he was

drunk, would come down before the mill gates and would
curse the mills; he would curse slag and slack; he would
curse the mill bosses and the men who worked; he would
curse the pouring steel and the fires, and the smoke that
poured out of the mills and blackened the sky. His
friends would follow him and watch him fearfully as he
stood, huge, before the mill gates, cursing. He would cry
out to the silent wall:

“I am stronger than you.”

As he drank in the saloon a fury would overtake him
and he would begin to talk of the mill, and then he would
rush out, and behind him there would be silence, no one —
would laugh. He would curse the mills and furnaces; he
would curse the machines; he cursed slag and slack. ©
When he was drunk he thought the machines were alive, —
he thought they owned him and that he was their slave.

Men and Machines 31
The Mad Gunner

- You will find repeated again and again the illusion that
the machines have a life of their own.

In France I heard a variation of Fraycar’s story.
There was a wounded man whose head had been hit by
shrapnel. He had been a gunner of one of the great guns.
He thought that he had a tremendous secret and he would
stop his nurse and the visitors and the doctor because he
feared that he might die and with him his secret would
perish. The secret was this:

It was that the machines, in revenge for the work
that we made them do, were killing men. He thought that
machines were alive and that they were malevolently dis-
posed to men.

“Stop making machines,’ he would cry, “and you will
stop war.”

He believed that the great gun had not been obedient to
him, but that he and the other men of the gun crew obeyed
the great gun and did its bidding.

CHAPTER IV

STEEL TOWNS

Braddock

buildings. Towns name their aspirations and tes-
tify to their failures in brick and mortar. In the
slums of cities civilization writes with stones and wood the
story of its defeat. Each generation through its palaces
names its ruler and its deity. Our noblest temples are builE |
in the service of transportation, and the towers of indus-|

—.

One write their history in terms of

try laugh at the church spires.

Streets and the houses on them cannot lie, nor do the
crowds which walk down them tell anything but truth.

For nearly half a century Coal and Steel have owned
great districts of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois.
For nearly half a century Steel has been writing its own
history in the houses and factories of its towns.

Braddock is one of the oldest steel towns. Here Car-
negie Steel was born. Its mills existed before the great —
mills of Homestead. A ganglion of towns—Braddock,
Rankin, Homestead, Bessemer, lined the Monongahela
River with steel mills.

All of Braddock is black. The soot of the mills has

o2

Steel Towns 33

covered it. There is no spot in Braddock that is fair
to see. It has neither park nor playground. It is a
town of slack disorder and of scant self-respect. Those
who have made money in Braddock mills live where they
cannot see Braddock. The steel workers who can, escape
up the hillsides. They go to North Braddock or to Wolf-
town; but many and many of them live and die in the
First Ward.

They live some in two-story brick houses, some in black-
ened frame dwellings. One set of houses faces the street,
the other the court. The courts are bricked and littered
with piles of cans, piles of rubbish, bins of garbage, hil-
locks of refuse—refuse and litter, litter and _ refuse.
Playing in the refuse and ashes and litter—children. The
decencies of life ebb away as one nears the mills. I passed
one day along an alley which fronted on an empty lot.
Here the filth and refuse of years had been churned into
viscous mud. A lean dog was digging. Pale children
paddled in the squashy filth and made playthings of an-
cient rubbish. Beyond was the railroad tracks, beyond
that the mills. Two-storied brick houses flanked the brick
street. No green thing grew anywhere.

But in the brick courtyard Croatian and Slovak women
were weaving rugs. In their villages in Europe they had
woven the clothes of their men. In Braddock’s squalid
courtyards they weave bright colored rugs and sing as they
weave. Here and there men bring tables out of doors and
play cards. They nod to me in village fashion as I pass.
Everywhere were children—Slovak children with flaxen

34 Men and Steel

hair and blue eyed; wide-faced Magyar children, Gypsy
children. Then I knew that the chief product of Braddock »
and its sister towns was not steel.

Their principal product is children.

Generation after generation of children, born where no
green thing grows. Hundreds and thousands of children
playing in the refuse of forsaken brick courtyards or
along the streets. Generations of children reared under
the somber magnificence of the clouds of smoke which
blanket the sky and obscure the sun. :

I learned in Braddock what condemns men to live in
these tenements on the river bottom where the slack from
the mills rains on them. |

What condemns them to live here is their children. The
more children the less the chance of escape. Here in
these Braddock houses live the people of eternally unful-
filled dreams, here live those whose hopes forever are
betrayed by the unforeseen, the people without a margin.

I know two men, Milko and Pasterik. They came to
this country together, a generation ago. Pasterik has
escaped to Wolftown and owns a square box of a house.
From his windows he can see the yellow water of the
Monongahela. Milko lives among the condemned in the
courtyard off Willow Way. He explained this to me.

“Missus,” he said, “my friend Pasterik get ten chil- |
dren. I get eleven. Four of his children die by diphtheria
all together. He can go—he can buy house. My children,
they all live.” |

Steel Towns 35.
Slack

Slack covers everything. It sifts in everywhere. Slack
is what doesn’t melt. in the mountains of red ore—a meial
particle, powdered ore, powdered metal. It silts down
all growing things. You can see the tiny bits of ore
gleaming on your hands. The shining ore dusts your coat.
It gets in your hair.

On certain days they blow the slack out. Mighty cur-
rents of air blow the choking slack out of the costly mill
chimneys onto the cheap human life outside. Those days
the sun is darkened, and the steel workers returning home
hide their faces as from a sand storm. They duck along,
jackets over heads, under the fury of the falling slack.
You find it everywhere. It lodges in the creases of your
clothes. Your hands are never clean. Nothing, between
soot and slack, can be clean long in the steel towns.

I have a friend who lives six miles from Braddock.
Every night she sweeps off her piazza; every morning you
walk across it you leave footprints in the slack fallen
during the night.

The smoke is not merely a stupendous background for
the flaming mills. It means work for anonymous women
in thousands of ramshackle homes, hard work, never ceas-
ing work. The men come home with oil-drenched clothes
for the women to wash, the soot and slack drift into the
houses, night and day, for the women to scrub.

36 Men and Steel
The Flag of Defiance

The women in the steel towns fly a flag of defiance
against the dirt. It is their white window curtains. You
cannot go into any foul courtyard without finding white
lace curtains stretched to dry on frames. Wherever you go,
in Braddock or in Homestead or in filthy Rankin, you will
find courageous women hopefully washing their white cur-
tains. There is no woman so driven with work that she will
not attempt this decency. |

It is the way these women have of reassuring themselves
against the drifting soot and the slack sifting in by night
and by day. It is their way of saying, “I love cleanliness
and beauty.”’ One could write a tragedy about these win-
dow curtains. They have become to these women a fixed
idea. They wash their sash curtains every week, and this
in towns where the water must be carried in buckets from
courtyards.

I saw only one house where the curtains were filthy in
the steel towns. It was a signal of defeat, a flag at half
mast. It was in the house of a young woman whose ©
oval face had a yellow pallor. She had a very young baby,
and at its birth she had blood poisoning. Now she was
barely able to do the most necessary (things for her
children and her husband. The room was in disorder. The
glowing spirit that marks so many of the Slovak homes
did not exist. Life pressed her too hard. She was swim-
ming against a tide too strong for her. As a signal of her
defeat, even the curtains were dirty.

> : a

Steel Towns 37

I learned this winter the difference between two rooms
and four. Two rooms means no privacy for any one. Four
rooms means decency and a home. I learned that a house
without running water means slavery for the woman living
in it. This winter in Braddock and in the steel towns in
Alleghany County I saw women washing clothes in icy
courtyards. I saw old women carrying buckets of water
from pumps. I have seen courtyards where lived thirty-
four families; they had but two faucets of water in the
court. I saw young mothers waik out in the snow for water.
I have seen them bent over from carrying buckets of water.

. There were many families where the woman washed the

clothes of her boarders, as well as those of her family.

These women spend their lives in an effort to keep clean.
It is unavailing; it is hard for any one—soot and slack
fall night and day and never stop; there is a fine scum
of blackness over everything. I have heard people say:

“Why do they live crowded in such places? Why do
the steel workers live in the filthy courtyards without run-
ning water, without conveniences? Why don’t they move?”
I heard a woman ask a priest this.

“Where can they move to?” he asked. “If a man is
working in the Edgar Thompson works, he must live in
Braddock; if he is working for the Carnegie Steel Com-
pany in Homestead, he must live in Homestead. If you
look.around and try to hire a better place, you will find
there is none. They cannot move unless they buy.”

38 - Men and Steel

Pittsburg

Pittsburg is shaped like the prow of a vessel. At the
point where the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers
flow together it seems to be cleaving up stream in their
embrace.

It is as though the business of Pittsburg were on an
island. As you come down the river Pittsburg presents —
a sky line which recalls New York; its high towers, com-
memorating the steel industries, search the skies. There
is a tingle of life in the air; it is one of the spots on the

earth which bubbles and boils and stews with vitality. —

Something here is being created. You cannot forget by day
or by night that Pittsburg makes steel. By day a cloud
of smoke tells you this, and the fiery rivers by night.

As you look you may read in Pittsburg’s streets and
Pittsburg’s rivers the history of this part of the country.

There was here first a trading post since it was a meet-
ing place of rivers; traders came from the north and met
those who came up from the Mississippi River.

The Pennsylvania Dutch made a comfortable city on
the site of the French traders. Then came steel and built
a clamorous city.

Pittsburg is built up sheer hills. If people tell you Pitts-
burg is not beautiful do not believe them. It is beautiful
in a new way. Its rivers at night run greasy like molten
metal in whirlpools of fire—whorls and spirals of fire from
the plant furnaces shatter the night of Pittsburg skies.

Steel Towns 39 |

All around Pittsburg are parks where the people live
who make the money from industry.

The people who make the steel live crowded on the south
side—they live in homes clinging to hillsides. You see
their shanties in the bottom of sudden gulches.

Youngstown

Youngstown is a yawning pit where they make steel,
surrounded by houses. The Youngstown steel works join
those of East Youngstown. You may ride for miles on
the trolley and all the while you will look down on the
tubing works. The might of steel is more visible in
Youngstown than anywhere else. Beside Youngstown the
works in Braddock, the steel works in Pittsburg, the great
Homestead works are but a beginning: these were the
seeds; Youngstown is the fulfillment. This river of steel
works runs from the works of Girard, across to Steelton
and marches up to East Youngstown miles away, a mighty
procession of chimney and blast furnaces.

In Youngstown one can look down on the steel yards
and realize their extent. They are so large that they
match the open pit mines whose size dwarfs men to ants
and engines to crawling beetles. You stand on the hillside
and watch the ceaseless activity. All day the yard engines
puff back and forth; all day the rows of chimneys belch
flame. By night Youngstown’s sky is incandescent with
the magnificence of the never-ending blasts; by night it
looks as though the end of the world were at hand.

40 Men and Steel

Youngstown’s main streets are full of shops. A river
of people flows down these streets perpetually. They
come from Central Europe; they come from Russia; the
Baltic and the Balkan states meet on Youngstown streets,
and go shopping together. By night they drift down the
street seeking pleasure. The people have not elbow room;
they swarm over one another. Saturday afternoon there |
is an air of holiday abroad. The town vibrates with a
vitality that does not know where to spend itself.

Up on the hillside are long streets filled with the homes
of the rich people. The steel workers talk about these
people; the steel workers tell you fantastic stories about
the lives of the rich men of their town; they tell you these
stories with disapproval. In the last twenty years steel
millionaires made money quickly in Youngstown, and they
made a great deal, and some of the men who made these
fortunes bit into life like greedy children; the workers
think that all of them have done that, for among them you
hear only fantastic tales of the men whose policies shape
the workers’ destinies. |

In East Youngstown life is scraped down to the bone:
there are the mills, there are the workers—and formerly
there were the saloons. There is nothing else. Here are
no fine houses, only the steel workers’ dwellings. Most of
them are ugly frame buildings, climbing muddy streets.

In East Youngstown you realize that men are here not
to live but to tend the mills. Humanity is dwarfed; the
machines which make the industry are exalted. In East
Youngstown is nothing but steel; there is a pillar of cloud

Steel Towns ; 41

by day and there is a saffron glare in the sky by night
that forever reminds you of this.

East Youngstown has a special flavor of its own. There
is a hope here that there is not in Braddock. The crowds
that swarm the main streets and fill the moving picture
shows are young and lusty.

But the races that mingle on Youngstown streets, who
drank together in the saloons, who play together in the
poolrooms, who fill the moving picture theaters, and who
shop together in Youngstown’s shops, make something else
beside steel.

They are talking over many things together. They do
not know what they want—they do not want what they
have. This talk goes on all the time; it goes on as per-
petually and inevitably as does the making of steel; it
keeps time with the rolling smoke by day and with the
fury of the fiery sky by night.

In 1916 the discontent welled over. From one day to

‘another Youngstown was on strike. No one knew why;

there were no leaders. From one day to another men quit

work and streamed down the streets. The mills stopped.
There was rioting. Strikers were killed. Houses were
burned. The strike flared up like a furnace blast. Like
the fire of the blast furnace their discontent has never
gone out.

42 Men and Steel
The New Towns

There is a part of Youngstown called Steelton, near the —
Ohio Works. During the war houses were built here that —
looked as though fitted for human habitation. In Steelton” 2
you may see nice houses with five and six rooms, houses of
concrete, neat frame houses with gas burners in the
kitchens. There is space for a garden.

There is a distance of generations between Steelton and
Braddock. Wherever you go you can tell the age of a
steel town by the quality of houses.

In the town of Gary, Indiana, the steel masters spoke
their minds in terms of the twentieth century. In Gary
there are school systems the world knows about; there are
playgrounds and there are baseball fields.

But, there is one thing in common in all these towns.
Meritorious East Pittsburg, Steelton with its comparative
-decencies, bleak Lyndora, Rankin stewing over the mills,
Braddock, and Homestead of the foul courtyards, Gary
and Youngstown—have all one overwhelming motive: Man
is puny; Industry great. :

CHAPTER V

STEEL AND LABOR

Old Organizations

N every community there is some dominant thought.
| If you look for it, there is some moral value expressed

in the structure of the houses and in the plan of the
town.

A roaring oil town, a new mining camp, spill out theiz
naive stories of greed and adventure.

I have seen Pennsylvania Dutch towns which proclaimed
in every brick, standards of comfortable decency. You
may read New Bedford’s history in one street. Portuguese
negroes from the Western Islands live in the beautiful
dilapidated houses of dead sea captains—they work in
the mills.

The atmosphere around Pittsburg towns is one of arro-
gant indifference to human beings. There is here, too, an
atmosphere of repression. A generation ago the steel
masters said “hush” to the workers, and they were obeyed.

When steel began to grow along the rivers the men
erganized. There was a time when Labor had a say
in the steel industry. In very early times the puddlers
_ spoke for their rights. In the fifties they organized into

43

44 Men and Steel

the Sons of Vulcan. This was a proud organization; its
men were fighters. Other organizations arose in the steel
industry, which all combined later in the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel and Tin Workers. The men
in this organization held their heads up and took off their
hats to no one; they were arrogant men, and their exist-
ence was a thorn in the side of the iron masters, who, in
those days, bargained with them.

Steel then grew great. The United States Steel Cor-
poration merged steel into a principality. To-day there
are 191,000 steel workers who draw pay checks from this
one great company. When the steel masters organized
themselves, they decided to crush their workers’
organization.

Up to 1892 there were shifting conflicts. The steel mas-
ters fought organized labor in two ways. ‘They used the
weapon of the: lockout, and they used the weapon of
espionage. Espionage grew powerful throughout the mills.
No one could tell where Judas sat. The air was poisoned
by the presence of spies. It is still poisoned.

In the Homestead strike of 1892, another weapon was
used. ‘The steel companies used armed detectives. Many
strikers were shot to death. They routed the strikers
and, by 1896, all unionism in the steel mills was crushed
for a generation. For a generation spies watched the
workers and union men were told to go.

This was called the ‘open shop system” and the “free

right of individual contract.”

Steel and Labor 45

So the government of the steel industry grew more auto-
cratic than that of an absolute monarchy.

Two rights existed to the peoples of despotic countries
of all times. One was the right of petition. If the people
had something they wished their king to know they could
tell him. Their petition was read by him and he replied
to it.

The United States Stee! Corporation is more autocratic.
It denies the men who work for it the right of petition—
for principle’s sake.

The people in autocratic monarchies had another right
which custom gave them. This was the right of demonstra-
tion. They could voice their grievances to their rulers
by this means.

They may not do this in the steel country—the employ-
er’s principles are against this.

The United States Steel Corporation will not commun-
icate with the representatives of men whom it employs.
Tt will not discuss with them those things which make up
the fabric of their lives. It will not bargain with labor.

The United States Government meets the representatives
of labor. The United States Steel Corporation will not.

46 Men and Steel

Freedom and Welfare

>

For a long time men and ore were on one footing; both\
were commodities; there was plenty of both. ‘When men
died of burns, when men were crushed in the mills, there
were others to fill their places. When discontent drove
men on, men were waiting for their jobs. Those were
the days that built such towns as Rankin and Braddock,
-as Homestead and McKeesport. Those were the old days
when the power of steel used men as it used the ore. In
those days science dealt only with the ore and the pro-
cesses of turning ore into iron and steel. The scientific —
spirit had not yet touched the men. Twenty years ago
life was cheap in the steel towns.

Science showed the need of a stable supply of labor;
it demonstrated how much new men cost; the shifting and ©
ebbing of labor was found to be expensive; a discontented,
disaffected labor supply did not produce. The heads of
great industries began to perceive that there was some-
thing wrong. The steel masters led the way in welfare
work. |

The United States Steel Corporation has spent millions
of dollars on welfare. It spent ten million dollars in
1917 and seventeen million in 1918. It provided schools
and churches and clubs. In the Senate investigations of
the steel strike Gary proudly gave the number of clothes
lockers, water closet bowls, sanitary drinking fountains,
swimming pools and restaurants provided for the men.

In 1918 the United States Steel Corporation spent a

Steel and Labor 47

million dollars on accident prevention. In six years the
fatalities were cut down nearly fifty per cent by safety
devices. The steel companies, formerly prodigal of human
life, had become paternal.

The Autocracy of Steel had become benevolent and
paternalistic. It rewarded loyal subjects—but it punished
disloyal ones with banishment in times of peace, and in
times of revolt it used armed force.

The Autocracy of Coal in West Virginia makes war

openly on the workers. The Autocracy of Steel makes
open war only in time of strike. It would rather be kind
-—if the workers would be good.
* Tt was too late. Another day had dawned. It was too
late to placate the workers with bands or even with pen-
sions. There was something new in the air. Men had
new thoughts and new desires. They were ready to
express them in other ways than by an upheaving surge
of inarticulate discontent. There was a great stirring
among the people. Not even the safety devices could stop
it. No amount of welfare work could prevent the workers
in the steel mills from hearing the great voices talking
throughout the earth,

48 Men and Steel

The National Commitiee for Organizing Iron and Steel
Workers |

In 1918 the American Federation of Labor voted to
organize the workers. The agreement between the work-
ers and employers of the War Labor Board still existed.
On one hand the workers had agreed not to strike; on the
other the employers had agreed not to interfere with the
organization of labor.

A sparse band of organizers began work in South Chi-
cago in 1918. They organized South Chicago; they organ-
ized Joliet and the Calumet basin; they organized Gary
where no organization had ever been. They worked in
the East. At last all the workers in the steel mills moved
and stirred together. In ten states and fifty towns thou-
sands and thousands of men thought together; thousands
and thousands of workers who would never know each —
other, who would never see one another, thought the same
thoughts. The disturbance throughout all the steel towns
was like a slow, heavy ground swell. There were very
few organizers and a great number: of steel workers.
There was very little money for so great a a
And yet, steel was organized. "

The mass of workers heaved and swayed—a long, slow
upheaval. It was as though they advanced on a deep
unhurried wave. It was like the heaving of mid-ocean.

How did they come to do this? The book that tells —
of the properties of the United States Steel Company is
a very large book. It tells of holdings so great that

Steel and Labor 49

the ordinary mind cannot grasp its implied power. The
men who own the steel mills and the mines and the rail-
ways that brought the steel ore down to the water-front
and the boats that carried it across the lake, own other
things in Alleghany County. They control the law courts.
The mounted state police are at their call. The political
power—with all burgesses and sheriffs—they own also.
In the steel country government is possessed nakedly by
those iron and steel masters and their friends. ,

The steel workers’ revolt was a dumb revolt, a revolt as
deep as has been the workers’ patience. This mute rebel-
lion of the steel workers had for its background the sullen,
coiling smoke, the perpetual soot, the ugly streets; all these
things, the long day, the long oppression, were the founda-
tion of the steel strike and they were its background.

The men struck even against the paternalism of the
steel masters who knew so little of what was in the work-
ers’ minds as to imagine that men who wanted freedom
would be content with welfare work.

The memory of Homestead, the upheaval in Youngs-
. town, the killing in Braddock, all were part of the strike.
The flag of hope, the white curtains of the steel makers’
wives were part of its fabric. The steel strike was not
made of a simple pattern. The strike was about all these
things, but it had a deeper portent.

The concern of these towns is not Life; it is Industry.
The making of steel has become a monstrous preoccupa-
tion. Production a game where men’s lives are used.

Life is about human beings. Human beings revolt when

50 Men and Steel

their existence is used for the pleasure of kings or for
making imperialistic wars or for the profits of industry.
That is why the organization was successful in spite of
the power of the steel masters. Organizing went on
underground, it went on through a fleet whispered word. :
Everywhere were spies; everywhere was repression. In
spite of this 300,000 steel workers struck. There was
something almost mystical in their unanimous action.
Stickers appeared which said: “Strike September 22.”

The Strike Demands

frell:

. Right of collective bargaining»

AS)

. Reinstatement of all men discharged for union activ-
ities with pay for time lost.

Bight hour day.

One day’s rest in seven.

. Abolition of 24-hour shift.

. Increases in wages sufficient to guarantee American

DX PB oo

standard of living.

7. Standard scales of wages in all trades and classifica-
tion of workers.

8. Double rates of pay for all overtime after 8 hours,
holiday and Sunday work. :

9. Check-off system of collecting union dues. |

10. Principles of seniority to apply in the maintenance,
reduction and increase of working forces.

11. Abolition of company unions.

12. Abolition of physical examination of applindae for
employment.

Steel and Labor 51
The President’s Conference

There was once a king who told the tides to cease
mounting. The President called an industrial conference.
This industrial conference met in Washington in early
October. There were represented the employers, labor
and the public. There were representatives of the farmers
and vested interests. There were two women.

The representatives of the public were quaint com-
panions. Whom did John D. Rockefeller represent and
whom Judge Gary? For what public did Charles Edward
Russel and Mr. Spargo, the two good Socialists, speak?

All these people had one quality which bound them
together; they were all old. The only. flower of youth was
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

All were old in thoughts, representatives of the old
order. There was no spirit of hope in the air. Every one
was asking, “What will come of this?” Every one, even
the great employers, was vague and undirected.

Perhaps they knew that they were too late, and that their
tardy argosy of conciliation could make no port in this
storm. These representatives of the old order gathered
together in Washington to patch an eleventh hour peace.
One could hear outside the thundering noise of youth.

They sat in the big white hall in the Pan-American
Building, in front of a lovely courtyard where great white
parrots and blue mackaws sat on perches. Outside in the
world the people Mr. Gompers represented were being
killed by those whom Judge Gary was said to control.

52 Men and Steel
The Laughter of Europe

Early in October another conference, having nothing to
do with the American steel strike in particular, met in
Washington. It was the first International Industrial
Congress. Here employers and the representatives of
labor met from all the countries of the world, except
America, to discuss matters of interest to both sides. In
Washington I met one of the Dutch employers.

“What a surprising country,” he said, and he shook with
laughter. “I am back in the Stone Age. Here I find you
have not settled the question of collective bargaining.
What a country !”’ He chuckled to himself. He could not
understand it. “You have a steel strike because Mr. Gary
will not talk to his workmen. I wonder the employers
allow industry to be stopped.”

But Mr. Gary of the United States Steel Corporation felt
himself a champion of the right of individual bargaining,
stemming the incoming flood of organized labor. He felt ©
himself a crusader. He received letters of congratulation
from chambers of commerce, from employers’ and manu-
facturers’ associations, from the heads of big business :
concerns.

But the Dutchman who represented the employers of
Holland stood laughing in the October sunlight because
it seemed to him amusing to find himself in a country
where such questions were unsettled. He went off laugh-
ing, and his laughter was the judgment of Europe.

Steel and Labor 53
“What Meaneth a Tyrant”

I happened to stop in an old bookshop during the first
days of the steel strike and there I found a book con-
taining a quotation from Las Siete Partidas. It was
written by Alphonso the Wise, a Spanish king of great
learning, who lived in the thirteenth century. He ex-
plained “What meaneth a tyrant, and how he useth his

- power in a Kingdom where he hath obtained it.” He said:
ee A tyrant doth signify a cruel lord, who, by force or by
erait, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm
or country; and such men be of such nature, that when
once they have grown strong in the land, they love rather
to work their own profit, though it be to the harm of the
land, than the common profit of all, for they always live
in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to
fulfill this their purpose unencumbered, the wise of old
have said that they use their power against the people
in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those
under their mastry be ever ignorant and timorous, because
when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against
“them, nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that
their victims be not kindly and united among themselves,
in such wise that they trust not one another, for while
they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make
any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy
~should not be kept among themselves; and the third way
is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them
upon great undertakings, which they can never finish,

54 Men and Steel

whereby they may have so much harm that it may never
come into their hearts to devise anything against their
ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to
make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have “
forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land,
and striven always to know what men said or did; and do
trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to
foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of
the land, who serve from oppression.” _

PART TWO
THE STEEL STRIKE

.

CHAPTER VI

THE STRIKE AND THE STRIKE LEADERS

The Scope of the Strike

thing. There was not one steel strike, but fifty.
There were strikes in fifty different communities.
Through ten states the steel workers struck. Throughout
the principality of steel they quit work, not less than three
hundred thousand of them. The strike swept through this
country like a flame. It leaped from town to town and

P vies. speak of the steel strike as if it were one

from state to state.

This is something new in the history of strikes, fifty
towns agreeing like a single community; Pueblo acting in
concert with Gary, Indiana; Birmingham, Alabama, keep-
ing step with Rankin; Youngstown and Johnstown both
shut down together as black as tar kettles.

Three hundred thousand people thinking the same thing.
Twenty nationalities striking for the same reason. Over
the wide expanse of this country one could see the most
dramatic thing in the world—thousands on thousands of
patient men doing nothing. Hundreds and thousands of
patient men staying home.

These workers were slenderly organized. They were

57

58 Men and Steel

separated by distance. ‘They were divided by race and
language, but for months they thought together, they
starved together, they suffered terror, suspense, doubt,
silence.

The method used for breaking the strike was to break
the workers’ system of communication with one another. —
To prevent their meeting together in a town. To keep ©
one town from knowing what another town was doing.
Though prevented from thinking together, yet the fifty
towns and the three hundred thousand men thought sim-
ultaneously the same thing.

They were without strike discipline, they were without
strike benefits; there were communities where no strike
meetings were allowed to be held, some of the men never
heard a speaker in their own language during all the strike.

It was as though some spiritual wave lifted up the —
heaving mass of the people and hurled it irresistibly for-
ward. |

Here in these towns two ideas of society met and clashed.
That of the steel masters was definite. It was formulated
in the eighteenth century. A generation ago, by destroy-
ing the workers’ organization, the great steel masters re-
stated this theory. It was that they had the right to run
their business as they chose. They believed this abso-
lutely. It was not hypocrisy on their part when they
called this “a matter of principle.” Frick believed this »
and Carnegie and the lesser Gary. a

It is the custom of the United States Steel Corporation
to crush out all rebellion among its workers. In this the

The Strike and the Strike Leaders 59

lesser iron masters follow the great ones. J have seen
two such rebellions crushed by the Steel Corporations.
One was of the miners in the Mesaba Range in 1916
and the other was that of the steel workers in 1919.

The steel masters would stop all industry, the workers
of the country could starve before the steel masters would
discuss matters of common interest with the steel workers’
representatives. The steel masters, whatever else they
are, have sincerity. I said this to one of the steel workers.
He answered:

“Sincerity like Hell! Sincere like the Croton-bug’s
love for meat.”

The strike of the steel workers was part of the strug-
gle for freedom. Down the ages people have striven ta
think for themselves. They have striven to govern them-
selves. Sparticus and the early Christians were part of
the struggle going on to-day. Through bloody conflict
men gained such rights to think as they now have. They
have paid for their incomplete victories by torture, exile
and blood. A common impulse toward freedom gave the
people their steadfastness and a desperate and enduring
patience.

This upwelling of the workers was contrary to the idea
of the iron masters, for the business of autocracy is the
maintenance and increase of its power.

The steel workers’ strike threatened this autocratic
industrial government. Autocracy had its age-old answer
to any attempt to limit its authority—repression with
violence.

60 Men and Steel
John Fitzpatrick and William Z. F oster

Samuel Gompers was first chairman of the National
Committee. He resigned in favor of John Fitzpatrick,
President of the Chicago Federation of Labor and most
beloved by the rank and file of all labor leaders. He con-
ducted the Chicago end of the strike but the responsibility
of the Steel Strike rested on William Z. Foster. He pre-
sented the resolution for organizing the iron and steel
workers to the Chicago F ederation of Labor in 1918. He
was then engaged in organizing the packing industry.
Largely through ‘Foster’s ability this industry whose
organization had been totally destroyed in 1907, was reor-
ganized. They won their demands without striking.

Foster imagined organizing steel under wartime condi-
tions, without striking steel. Through lack of money and
loss of time his first plan was not realized. He worked with
what materials he had. It had been said steel could never
be organized. Foster and the men working with him
organized steel.

Foster is a long New Englander from Taunton, Mass.
He has a thin face, a kind mouth and eyes, and he can
work from morning to night, interrupt his work to receive
a hundred people, and never turn a hair. He is composed,
confident, unemphatic and imperishably unruffled. The
waves of the strike break around him, there come to him:
the incessant news of arrests, there come to him daily
multitudinous problems for decisions. All the minutie of
this strike flung over the surface of the whole country,

The Strike and the Strike Leaders 61

involving the destinies of the men of a whole great indus-
try come to him. Never for a moment does Foster hasten
his tempo.

One of the reasons of this is that he seems completely
without ego. Foster never thinks of Foster. He lives com-
pletely outside the circle of self. Absorbed ceaselessly
in the ceaseless stream of detail which confronts him.
A ceaseless stream whose sum spells the fate of 500,000
men, and all those dependent upon them.

I have never heard him express himself in any abstrac-
tion. But the sum of my impression of him is this. It is
as though he said:

“All I can do is my best. This is not a fight of to-day
nor of to-morrow, it is part of the fight that was going on
at the time of the Cesars. This great steel strike is only
an incident.”

Once in a while he gets angry over the stupidity of man;
then you see his quiet is the quiet of a high tension
machine moving so swiftly it barely hums.

He is swallowed up in the strike’s immensity. What
happens to Foster does not concern him. I do not believe
that he spends five minutes in the whole year thinking of
Foster or Foster’s affairs.

Some Crganizers

Organizing the steel workers was warfare. It needed
courage to organize steel in the Pittsburgh district. Every
force of society was against these organizers. The A. F.

62 Men and Steel

of L. was treated in the steel towns and in the Allegheny,
Mahoning and Monongahela valleys as though it were a
predatory outlaw band.

The local secretaries were men in their forties most of
them, men getting gray, old trade unionists.

These men were threatened with mob violence, they were
attacked by the press, they were accused of graft, they
were arrested, released, re-arrested. Some startled men
were arrested on the charge of criminal syndicalism.

Suddenly they found themselves outside the pale of
organized society. It was a strange thing for most of them
to find themselves opposing society, to have their meetings
broken up by the State Constabulary, to be unable to get
a hall in the town, to be constantly subject to arrest and
to the abuse of the press. They had always had to fight
employers; now government was against them.

There was never a more devoted group of men than
those who worked by Foster’s side in the campaign of
organizing the steel workers. Only men of courage and
determination could survive. The brunt of the fight around
Pittsburg was borne by J. G. Brown, a shingle weaver
from the Northwest, a tall man with quiet ways. They
pried open town after town. In one steel town after
another meetings were held where there had been no or=
ganization allowed by the steel masters in twenty years.
In one steel town after another the local secretaries estab-
lished themselves in the face of violence and abuse.

CHAPTER VII

VIOLENCE
Police Violence

OSTER and the local organizer had to face abuse
before the strike. Everything the steel companies
could do was done to discredit Foster. Everything

the police and bosses could do to discourage the organiza-
tion of the workers, was done.

When the men struck violence by the police increased.
The Constabulary had already been active. Now the state
troopers appeared in all the steel towns. They broke
up meetings. They rode their horses into the workers’ very
houses. In Braddock no assemblies of people were per-
mitted. They rode down men coming from mass. Steel
workers could not assemble. They chased the children
of Father Kazinci’s parish school.

>

“It is terror, you know,” one of the organizers said to
me, “when you’re on foot and they ride down upon you
and you see their three-foot riot clubs raised above your
head.” |

The idea seemed to be to terrorize the workers. There
were besides deputized gunmen. Workers were arrested
by the hundreds, held, and no charges preferred against
them. Then they were fined.

63

64 Men and Steel
Constabulary in Braddock

In Braddock no one could tell why the State Constab-
ulary were there. The Burgess didn’t know, nor the
President of the Council, nor the Councilmen. The Edgar
Thompson Mills had never shut down completely. There
was never any trouble in Braddock. On Braddock’s front
street there was no sign of a strike. Life went on as usual.
But one day, unasked, the Constabulary rode into Brad-
dock on their beautiful horses, and there they stayed.

During the first days of the strike they patrolled the
streets where the workers lived. I saw two of them riding
down a mean street. They rode abreast and had their
clubs in their hands, looking very splendid and martial.
The word went through the courts and alleys, “The Cos-
sacks are here!’ All the little boys ran out to stare at
them. Women came out of houses and stood on door-
steps, their babies in their arms; striking steel workers
came out from courtyards. It was as good as a circus
parade. The Cossacks walked their horses to the end of.
the street; then they turned and smartly trotted their
horses back. They drove the people from the street.
They drove the women and children back from their stoops
into the houses. é

Both troopers were young fellows; one was boyish and
blonde and the older one was dark with a sullen look to
him. One tossed a joke to the other as they came. They
looked as if they were having a good time seeing the
people scurry into the houses like frightened rabbits.

Violence 65

At a corner opposite me a man stood staring at them.
He looked like a Pole, with high cheek-bones and bright
blue eyes, his blonde mustache curled up sharply. The
Constabulary came trotting down on him.

A woman near me took hold of my arm and said:

“Come inside, missus; you'll get hurt.”

The troopers had an argument with the man. The
man said:

“I’m standing on my own stoop.”

“Get into the house, you » said one who raised
his club and made as though to ride up the stoop. The
man very slowly went into his house. They rode on
leaving an empty street behind them.

66 Men and Steel
Brutality of Power

When I went into the Strike Headquarters ‘in Pittsburg
a stout man, tipped back in a chair, was telling a story of
what had happened in Clairton before the strike.

“We couldn’t hold a meeting in Clairton; we couldn’t get
a permit. We hired an empty lot from a striker and held
a meeting there. The Cossacks broke it up. They tore
down an American flag. They trampled it under their
horses’ hoofs. That started trouble with the ex-service
boys. Seven was arrested and fined.”

“But,” said the organizer, “even if he was drunk what
made him tear down the flag?”

We used to talk about the psychology of the Constab-

ulary. We could never understand the things they did.
There seemed to be no answer to them. It tasted of un+
reason. Why should they tear down an American flag?
Why should they chase babies going to school? The
breaking up of meetings—that was easy. It was the detail
we could not fathom. :

What has happened to a man when his instinctive ges-
ture is to strike a frightened woman in the face, like the
Slovak woman in Braddock to whose house I went one day?

As I came in to the Braddock office some one was won-
dering:

“But why should he slap her face?”

The organizer explained to me: “The Cossacks were
searching a Slovak lady’s house.”

I went to see the woman. In her house piles of clothes

Violence 67

newly dried lay in disorder on the lounge. The dishes had
not been washed. The work was not getting on. In the
midst of this sat a bulky young woman. It was getting
hard for her to do her work. Her time was near—she
moved with effort.

She spoke little English and told her story in her own
language. The girl with me translated.

“She says her husband and the boarder was asleep
upstairs. The Cossacks came in. She screamed. The
Cossacks said, ‘Shut your mouth.’ She screamed again.”

“Then he do this,” the woman interrupted. She made
a gesture of striking, negligent, powerful, contemptuous.

?

“He hit her across the face with his glove,’ the girl
explained.

I asked, “Why did they search the house?”

“My husband, he a striker,” she explained. She turned
to the girl and spoke in Slovak. The girl translated:

“She says they broke her trunks up.”

“Why?” I asked.

The woman shook her head. She could not tell. The
Cossacks had come splendid and contemptuous and hit her
in the face, had strewn things around, and broke her
trunks.

The stories of beatings and arrests came in an endless
flood. There was no end to them. Within two days one
was drenched with them. In three days one was saturated.
They made no more impression. They became part of life.

68 Men ana Steel
Foster’s Office

Through Foster’s office flowed a constant stream of

people with stories of violence. The telephone buzzed — a
news of arrests, of beatings. Women with shawls over _

their heads came in for news of missing husbands.

“The head office of the National Committee for Organ-
izing Iron and Steel Workers’? implies size, power, and
extended organization. It sounds imposing. All that is
imposing about it is the name. This head office was one
small room. In it were Foster and Foster’s stenographer.
There was, besides, Edwin Newdick, the publicity director.
Part of the time there was an extra stenographer. As far
as the steel strike was concerned, they had no such thing
as publicity in the modern sense of the term. The United
States Steel Corporation did all the publicity.

A glance at Foster’s office showed many posters on the
walls; the poster “Americans All’’—our foreign nationali-
ties fighting together under our flag. Next to this an

announcement of Mother Jones’ meeting; another one an-.

nouncing a meeting at which Foster would speak. One or

two cartoons, a blackboard, two tables and a desk, and a

picture of the patient face of murdered Fanny ‘Sellins. |
It is the quietest office I have ever been in. No one ever

gets excited. Every one works ceaselessly and without —

flurry. All day long people came to see Foster. Foster
talked with any one who wanted to talk with him. He was
as accessible as the Post-Office Building opposite.

Violence 69
Fanny Sellins

Fanny Sellins was a woman organizer who was murdered
by gunmen. The picture of her bruised face-is hung in
every organizer’s office. It is a little picture on a post-
eard. In Foster’s office it was tacked up on a bulletin
board as though at random. From its inconspicuous place
it dominated the office. Whoever came in turned to look
at it. it made no difference how often one came in, one’s
eyes, in spite of oneself, traveled to the post-card on the
wall.

When the strike was still young I came in one day. A
little old woman stood before it. Her hair had the pure
white of extreme age. She wore a basque with lace on it,
and a bonnet that had a touch of purple. A very neat little
old woman, who looked like everybody’s grandmother. She
was standing before the picture and talking as though to
herself. |

“I often wonder it wasn’t me they got. Whenever I
look at the picture of her I wonder it’s not me lying on
the ground. They shot her from behind when she bent over
children to protect them. They knew what they were
doing. They went out to get Fanny Sellins. Bending over

them children with her back turned, they shot her.”
Every one stopped to listen to this old woman. She
sighed and turned toward us.

“Oh, well, I must now be going. Is any one to carry my
bag?”

There was a group of young men in the office. They

70 Men and Steel

had come in from some of the surrounding steel towns.

_ There were always people in Foster’s office. They all came
forward. |
“We'll all go with you, Mother,” they said.

‘%
a
4

?
_
2

She went out, the foreign boys walking shelteringly i

about her. Mother Jones and Fanny Sellins are the only 4

two American women oa foreign steel workers know
about.

Third Degree

One night I sat late in Foster’s quiet office, talking with

- Mrs. Foster. Sylvia Manley, Foster’s daughter, was there

working. The men had gone. The door opened as though
blown by a wind, and Mestovic, the organizer from Clair-

ton, came in shoving before him two Slovak boys. Mes- —

tovic was a black flame flickering in the wind of anger.
The intense and passionate allegiance which some men give

to their country, he gives to the Union. By his own effort —

he brought in 1,200 men. He has been arrested, fined,
threatened. Each threat and each arrest was like oil
thrown on a blazing fire. He is a Croatian and his lean
dark face looks as though he had Gypsy blood. He was
quiet in the excitement of his anger.

“Show your wrists,” he said. The two boys stolidly put

out their wrists. They were bruised and chafed; one bled.

“You should see them when they got loose four or five
hours ago.”

We asked what had happened.

“Handcuffed all day to beds in hotel room.” He told

Violence | 71

the story with quiet violence. The boys threw in an unemo-
tional detail like, ““Then the Cossack hit me and called me
‘you damned Bolshevist. |

“A scab lived in his house and the landlady throw him
out. Some one break his trunk. He go for constabulary.

> 939

Six or seven constabulary come and get boys. They take
them to hotel where they stay. They put them in separate
rooms. They don’t arrest them. They don’t take them to
jail. They twist their arms, they handcuff them, they
fasten this boy to iron rail of bed so he bend over. He
stay there from nine to half-past four.”

“TI cry and cry,” said the boy. “My wrists swell up. I
ask they give me a drink. I ask they loose up handcuff.
Them only make handcuff tighter. I don’t know what I
do. They say ‘you damn Bolshevik! Your friend confess;
better for you you confess too.’ I know he don’t confess.
How can he?”

“This boy, they beat him,” said Mestovic, pointing to the
other. “They beat him so his nose bleed. They give him
cloth so blood don’t get on carpet, but it get on carpet all
_the same.”

72 | Men iand Steel
The Striker Who Came to Be Reassured

In the third week of the strike I saw a young fellow
standing in Foster’s office, as though waiting for some one.
Every one was busy. People came and went. For a long

time no one spoke to him. He waited in good-tempered

patience. At last some one asked him what he wanted.
He wanted advice. He had ninety cents left. He wanted
to know what to do. He did not want strike benefits.
He wanted moral support and encouragement. He wanted
to know how he was going to get along. He was a for-
eigner and a young married man. Beside his ninety cents
he had some chickens. He had good neighbors who would
give him vegetables from their garden. He told his story
deprecatingly, smiling in an embarrassed fashion over his
difficulties. The people in the office talked it up with him.
He knew there. would be no strike benefits. He had the
contact he wanted and he went away, still with his smile,
his assets, his ninety cents, his good neighbors, and his
will to stick it out, and there were thousands like him in the
strike.

Se a a

a

CHAPTER VIII

STRIKE MEETINGS
Pittsburg Meetings

[N Pittsburg no one but the steel workers knew there
was a strike, for picketing was not allowed. When
the strike occurred Sheriff Haddock deputized five

thousand men. He said that there were only five thousand
people striking in the Pittsburg district. He deputized
one man for every striker.

The strikers stayed home in Pittsburg. Some went out
to find other jobs. Some met together in pool rooms. You
could find them in their houses. You could see them nights
at the Labor Temple. At the Labor Temple strike meet-
ings were permitted. Strike meetings were not allowed
elsewhere in the City of Pittsburg. There was not at any
time a hint of riot; there was not at any time a hint of
trouble. But no meetings were allowed.

The Labor Temple sits on a hill far off from the steel
mills. It meant a ten cent fare to come to a meeting, or a
walk of miles. Distances are far in Pittsburg.

Once when the American Federation of Labor tried to
hold a meeting in a’ hall nearer the strikers’ homes, the
streets around the hall were dark with people. People

73

74 Men and Steel

were huddled on the corners; people formed a square on

- streets leading to the hall. <A light cordon of police had.

been thrown about the hall. In front of the hall stood
four policemen. A patrol wagon was standing near. We
came in a jitney and were allowed to pass. Inside there
was no one. Downstairs in the vacated bar-room with its
clinging smell of stale beer stood the German owner of
the hall. He was apologetic. ‘Three policemen blustered
up, a good-looking sergeant and two others.

“You can’t meet here,” they said. ‘No meetings,” they
repeated.

The Socialist Party met in this hall without permits.
Foreign language groups met without permits. Striking
steel workers could not meet. The American Federation of
Labor was outlawed.

The organizers and a lawyer wrangled with the police.
Both sides grew hot. Outside in the darkness the steel
workers waited. There was a feeling of tenseness in the
air. A very little would have made trouble. Outside the
police were handling the crowd pleasantly, urging them to
walk on. The crowd flowed along like sluggish water.
Men muttered their dissatisfaction in their own tongues and
sullenly obeyed.

ty ee = 5

Strike Meetings 15
Father Kazinci’s Church

One Sunday I stood in Homestead trying to get a car
for Braddock. The cars were filled; men hung from them
like swarms of bees. Homestead was moving to Braddock.
There was an exodus. Those who could not get on cars,
walked. I got a place at last. There were also women in
the crowd. I wondered why the working population of
Homestead went to Braddock. All the cars that came into
Braddock were crowded. Those from Bessemer and those
from McKeesport, and cars coming from Rankin, all were
black with crowding men.

It was.a good-natured crowd; it had a holiday air. Men
joked one another. Men called out to friends. It seemed
like a time of festival. I got off at Main Street, following
the crowd. They all converged at St. Michael’s Church.
Far down the street men were standing. The church was
' packed. Then I saw every one was going to Father
Kazinci's church. There were no labor meetings allowed in
McKeesport, no meetings in Rankin; Homestead had one .
meeting a week. But the steel workers could come to hear
Father Kazinci preach. :

They made way for me. I managed to squeeze in. In
that church there was an air of happiness. They had
escaped from the Constabulary. The Constabulary could
not follow them to church. There were old women with
faces wrinkled like dried figs, wide-bosomed mothers, their
faces still brown from the sun. There were children. Men
knelt in the aisles; the aisles were black with men. The

76 Men and Steel

church was more crowded than the organizer’s office. Their
_ restlessness and anxiety were gone. They stood quiet, re-
leased, free for a moment. Then full-throated this audience
sang a chant of the sixth century—men and women and

%
.
%

eh

children. 'The Slovaks have never lost the custom of com- ~

munal singing. |

Then Father Kazinci preached. He spoke in Slovak.
I could not understand. Later I asked him what he had
preached. He said, “I preach to them about their own
weapons. Against them are violence, lies, repression.
They have only their patience, their faith, their endurance

—-and then I told them the story of Pharaoh. He would

not let the Children of Israel out of bondage.”

Strike Meetings 77
Meeting in Homestead

After twenty years labor meetings were permitted in
Homestead for the first time. I went to one such meeting.
It was held in a small hall. The room was packed with
the same quiet men I had often seen in the National Com-
mittee Offices.

On the platform sat six troopers.. They were in their
uniforms of dark gray. They carried their clubs and their
revolvers were strapped to their sides. It seemed more
like a police court than a labor meeting. The audience
was foreign. Only a few spoke English as their native
language. But the speaking was all in English. Foreign
language speakers were not permitted.

It was not because there had been disorder in Homestead
that the Constabulary was there. There had never been |
disorder. The Constabulary was there to censor the meet-
ing. The organizer spoke only in generalizations. He
spoke in platitudes. The men listened with grave atten-
tion, but their eyes were fixed on the state troopers. They
eyed them with dislike and anger. They kept steady eyes .
upon them.

These meetings were allowed once a week as a conces-
sion to free speech, after they had arrested Mother Jones
and thousands of workers had milled around the jail
demanding her release. The authorities came to her in
her cell and asked if she could send the workers home.
She came out and spoke to them. She got them in a good
humor. She sent them home. Now they may have meet-

78 Men and Steel :

ings in Homestead—with the state Constabulary on the :
platform.

They were sterile meetings; there might as well have
been none. But this fight of the rank and file was not fed
by oratory; it was not made by excitement. There was
behind it a terrible patience. The men sat there rigid,
listening to unimportant things said in a language they did
not understand. Whenever there was a meeting they came
and faced the State Constabulary, who looked down inso-
lently upon them.

Marching Men

A wide country, brown farms, comfortable frame houses
shaded by trees, round white clouds rolling over a blue
sky, a keen wind blowing dust; a white road filled with
men, a road as crowded as Broadway at noon; men and
boys walking in groups, men by twos talking together, men~
walking alone plugging along with their heads down,
walking fast as though late to an appointment. Here and
there like bright punctuation marks, women. A few young
girls walking swiftly, most of the women accompanying
husbands. Brave looking women, placid, wide hipped;
three thousand men and women pouring over a road.

These are steel workers from Sharon and Farrell leav-
ing Pennsylvania to go to a meeting in Ohio. The men
have on white collars; they are freshly shaved; they are
neatly dressed in their best clothes. They look as if they
were going to Mass. There is a cheerful air of holiday

Strike Meetings 79

among them. Some of the younger fellows sing; a few
of them joke each other; most of them swing along silent,
striking out toward Ohio.

In Farrell no meetings can be held. Steel workers in
Farrell and Sharon are not allowed to discuss their busi-
ness. They have to walk many miles to go to a meeting.
Every week they file out, hundreds of them, to learn how
their strike is going. During the week they must sit silent
and quiet in their homes. They must sit quiet in
their homes and watch the scabs going to work. They
have nothing to keep them from doubt, so they step out
hopefully to get away from the silence. They stand all
the afternoon under the sky, listening to speakers.

They have to bring home faith enough to last them a
week. Back in Farrell there is silence, doubt, isolation
and the threatening smoke of the mills.

As we went across the state line into Ohio I walked with
four boys. They were American born. They were all
counted as Hunkies. As we went across the line one said:

“Here we are back in America.”

*

80 Men and Steel

Meeting in Youngstown

In the Youngstown Office there was a blackboard. AD |
list of towns was written on it. Opposite the name of each
town was a speaker’s name. ‘There were a great many i:
meetings in the Youngstown district. There were few
organizers. Every organizer had to speak at two or three
meetings every night. Youngstown organizers had no time ‘i
for play. They moved incessantly from oné strike meeting
to another. ;

I went with an organizer to East Youngstown. The
hall was up a steep hill. The street was dark and rutted
by rain. Coming up the stairs the noise of the meeting
came to us in a roar; the heat of the hall rushed out at us
like the blast of a furnace. Men were talking at the top
of their voices. Men were arguing together; men were
laughing. The men were happy and excited. Their eyes
flashed. They were rested and gay; they were ready for
anything. The strike was young.

They have not forgotten that four years before they
had swirled out from the shops and mills in a mighty flood.
Then they had been leaderless; their rebellion was unfor-
mulated. Now they were directed; they knew what they
wanted. They felt they would get it. Packed in this hall
they felt their united strength. It was a young, gay |
strength. It had an irresistible quality. The organizer —
said to me: “If they could keep this spirit they could win |
any strike.” They had an easy confidence in themselves.
For three weeks no smoke had stained Youngstown’s chim- |

Strike Meetings il

neys. For three weeks the saffron glare had gone from
the sky. The sky had been undisturbed by the sudden
fury of the blast furnace.

A foreign speaker began; the laughter stopped. The
men raised earnest faces to him. From the platform you
could look down into them. The steel workers are wide
shouldered, strong looking men. Most of these men were
of Slavic origin: Poles, Slovaks, Croatians. There were
also a few Italians, some Rumanians, a few Negroes. I
could not understand the speaker; I could understand the
silent men. This room was packed with quiet rebeliion.
There were fifteen more halls that night in the Youngs-
town district filled with workers. Every race had its meet-
ing. Rooms packed with revolt; halls filled with men
determined to win, men greatly tired of conditions under
which they had been living.

This Youngstown crowd was an excited crowd; the

tingling quality of it caught me up. In another moment
they would have gone cheering down the street, and I
would have gone after them had they gone.
Their mood .changed. It was as though clouds had
darkened the sky. Their faces became hard. The faces
of the crowd mirrored their anger as the sea mirrors an
approaching storm. I heard the name of Fanny Sellins.
The organizer was speaking earnestly, without gesture,
bent over slightly from the hips, talking down into the
faces of the crowd. “Fanny Sellins’” and again “Fanny
Sellins’” I heard him repeat, while the face of the crowd
darkened and grew still with silent menace.

CHAPTER IX

SENATORS AND STEEL WORKERS

Senate Investigation

\ j J HEN the workers in important industries strike

j itis customary to hold a Senate investigation.

_ During the first ten days of the strike four-
teen people had been killed. All of them were strikers.
Fanny Sellins had been murdered. The number of
wounded was not known. People nursed their wounds in
silence. Gary was under martial law. There were no
civil liberties in Pennsylvania. A million dollars a day
was the loss in wages to the steel workers. The loss to
the steel companies was not calculated. The industries
dependent on steel were slowed down.

Mr. Gary’s eighteenth century principles, which give a
man control over his own business, were at stake.

The Senators inquired into these facts. The investiga-
tion took place in a courtroom in the Post Office Building
in Pittsburg. In the center of the room is a square en-
closure. Here sat the middle-aged-to-elderly gentlemen,
the Senators. One came from the South, one from New
England, one from the Southwest, and one from the
Middlewest. The lawyer for the steel corporation and the

82

Senators and Steel Workers 83

lawyer for the workers sat within the enclosure. A small
group of steel operators sat with them.

The investigation was only interesting to the steel
workers. They had come in numbers. They stood quietly,
filling one side of the court house allotted to them, while the
“general public’ sat in a sparse row at the far end of the

_ hall.

Before the Senators flowed a ceaseless stream of people.
These were all dressed in their best clothes. The men were
shaved. They came before the Government in their best.
Few spoke English well. Many of the women testified
through interpreters.

They told before the Senate the stories of violence which
one could not escape in Foster’s office or in the offices of
the local secretaries. They told without emotion the stories
of beatings and arrests. They seemed resigned. They did
not seem surprised or indignant. For days one found
before the Senate decent respectable folk telling fantastic

stories of abuse. Their defenselessness and respectability

were what one remembered of them.

Bullied Workers

A Slovak woman from Dinora, with dark hair and pink
cheeks, testified. This is my memory of what she said:

“My husband and my children were in bed. I go to
the store before they get up. I must go to the store early
and get what they need. I go on street walking to the
store. Some one behind me call ‘Scab!’ ”

84 Men and Steel

She was caught in the picket line between the picketers

and the scabs. A negro took hold of her arm. He pointed ©

a gun at her and arrested her.

“He called me bad names, too,” she said. She was taken

to jail and told to pay a fine. She said she would not
pay—she was not guilty; but because she had a six-months-

old baby she finally paid. But they kept her in jail all

day and into the night while her husband looked for her.
She testified there were colored strike-breakers and that
negroes were deputized. While she was in jail, terribly

beaten men were brought in.

“My wife and children were sick,’ said a man from

Monessen who worked in the wire mill. “I was going for

the doctor. Some one said, ‘Don’t go down there. The
State Constable is there taking people to jail.’ I had to
go back—they got clubs.”

The State Constable with a horse rode him down. He
was arrested and held for $500 bail. He pleaded with
them to send the doctor to his wife and children. He

worked eleven hours a day and thirteen at night. He —

worked through a long shift Sundays, and was striking for
better conditions and for eight hours. He had taken out
his first papers, but had never had time to become a citizen.

He was young and full of high vitality, and he told his
story of his arrest with an air of naive surprise as though

he were asking himself, ““What the devil did the State Con- |
stable pounce on me for when I was just going to the ©
doctor? And they searched me too—that’s queerer yet.” _

A Croat, who makes wire in Monessen, was an angry

Senators and Steel Workers 85

witness. They had arrested him, found him unarmed, and
told him: “If you don’t go to work you must go to jail.”

He was a strongly built young man and his fury
streamed out in his answer. He was not polite to the
Senators. The representatives of the higher government
of the United States did not impress him as it did the other
steel workers. To most steel workers the government is
an august thing which they respect. He had been in
_ America thirteen years. They asked him why he was not
a citizen and he flung at them with passion: |

“Cause I don’t get time!”

Later he told them, still rudely, and with anger:

“I'd like to learn. If I’m going to work eight hours
I’m going to learn. I like this country. I like America.
If I take a day off I have no money to pay board. Sure,
I like to learn about the government of this country.”

But his manner said, “You fools! How do you expect
me to learn when I work half the time night and twelve
hours?”

As a final proof of his fatigue he flung at them that he
hadn’t been to a movie for over a year.

Not every one was bewildered and not every one was
resigned. Now and then a conscious young fellow would
tell you all you wanted to know about the strike, like a
young man who said he worked in the Mayo Mill at 174%
cents an hour in 1914. He was in the Sixth Engineers
during the war. He came back March, 1919, and was
demobilized in April.

“I had a mother to support. They offered me a shovel-

86 Men and Steel

ing wheelbarrow job. I turned it down. I got a job in 4
the steel works on September 3rd. Clothes cost six or

seven dollars a week. You can’t keep on wearing your
clothes. They get soaked with oil. Your shoes don’t last.
The heat burns the soles off your shoes.”

“Did many men strike in your mill?”

“They all struck.’ His answer was like a sharp salute.

“Why did you strike?”

“I thought it was my duty because I couldn't get any
satisfaction from the Company. They patted me on the
shoulder and said, ‘We will give you a good job.’ They
urged the men to come to work and then the Company
_ gives them guns. We were told the Superintendent car-
ried in whiskey to the scabs.”

“What are you striking for?” they asked him.

“Eight hours, more pay, better conditions and more
safety devices,’ he rapped out on them, barking it like a
command on parade.

Outside Arrests

There were called as witnesses some odd men who were
not strikers. Such as the man from the grocery store in
Homestead, with a greenish pale face and a long plaster on
his head. He had been an American citizen for three years.
He was standing in the doorway of his store when a State
policeman came in and knocked him down and beat him.
He never knew what he was charged for, but was held
in $300 bail and fined $6.35. He gave his testimony in a

Senators and Steel Workers 87

low tone, unassertive, almost apologetic. He seemed to be
questioning the Senators and the crowd at large as to why
this strange fate should have overtaken him.

The hotel keeper from Homestead has been an American
citizen for ten years. He was a puffy, inoffensive man,
not accustomed to asserting himself. He, too, seemed
puzzled like the man of the grocery store. He had come
from Germany and had his hotel for six years. He was
beaten up and arrested. They chased him into the hotel
and tried to ride the horses in after him. He was asked
whether they often rode their horses into the houses.

“They rode their horses into the women’s houses,” he
answered.

Later some one explained the case of the hotel man and
the grocer to me. “Most likely they gave the strikers
credit or let them come to their places. Any one sympa-
thetic to the strikers is liable to get beat up.”

It was the matter-of-factness of this that is its most
fantastic element. Every one had accepted the troopers;
every one had accepted the fact that strikers get beaten.
The Constabulary and beatings had become part of the
strikers’ lives in Allegheny County.

ie

88 Men and Steel
Docile Steel Workers

There are plenty of satisfied workers, plenty of people
who have nothing against the United States’ Steel Corpora-
tion. :

There was one gentle old fellow who testified a long
time. He spent thirty-three years of his life working in
the mills. An old man, gray of face, gray of hair. He
seemed very tired. He seemed dim and bewildered. He
works twelve hours a day and doesn’t think it is too much.
- He has worked twelve hours for thirty-three years. He
got 17 cents an hour when he started and now gets 33
cents. He has nine children, five boys and four girls. —
All but one are married. Life has given him all he desires.
He owns his home. He thinks he is glad to work twelve
hours a day. He is the perfect product of the system of
the Steel Company. There would be no disturbance in the ©
steel mills if all were like him. He is an Englishman, and
he doesn’t know what they want to go out making trouble
for. He accepts twelve hours of work like a law of nature.

Another witness like him was a man, thirteen years in
this country, now making $4.32 a day. He had no ecom-
plaint against the Steel Corporation. He shoveled coal
ten hours a day.

“What was the strike about?”

He shook his head. He did not know.

Would he like to learn English? Yes, but he was too
old.

“If I go to school now some one laugh at me,” he said

ee
alioe

a a

: a : va _ Senators and Steel Workers 89

b os ten Bink a day. He thinks BE is content.

Ne There were many witnesses like this, slow old men, long

in n the service of U. S. Steel, old men without complaint.
i hey did not know what the strike was about. They did
10t want to know. Dim, patient people, uncomplaining,

men whose desires did not transcend a steady job.

=

90 Men and Steel

Americanizgers

After a few weeks of deliberation, the Senators turned
in the report of their investigation. They recommended

a shorter work-day; they admitted the Constabulary had

overstepped the bounds in some cases. Americanization of
the workers, they felt was what they needed.

I was discussing this question of Americanization with
a striker standing on the street corner of Braddock. The
smoke rolled up in a mountain of gray and white before
us. A. flicker of sulphur colored flame blossomed for a
moment at the summit of one of the mill chimneys. The
street was empty but for an old woman with her hair tied

eae
rears ase a
Dae ea as

up in a black kerchief, dragging some wood along, and

another carrying groceries.
“Being a citizen,” he said, “that means first of all loving

your country, don’t it? You have got to love it to begin —

with.”

Two state troopers turned in at the far end of the street
and paced slowly up.

“That's hard to do,” he said, “when you live in the town
with them fellows.”

CHAPTER X

OUTSIDE PEOPLE
Comfortable People

ITTSBURG sprawls into far suburbs where the

comfortable people live. It was not by chance that

few of these came to the Senate Investigation.
They were not greatly interested in the steel strike. There
must have been some who wondered why three hundred
thousand people walked out, and some of the well-to-do.
women may have felt concerned. I did not meet any; but
I heard that indignant women met in the women’s clubs
to condemn the strikers. There were many people who
were angry at the workers for striking. They called the
_workers Bolsheviks. There were others who thought that
the.workers were only misled. These called the leaders
Bolsheviks.

A long shadow was cast by Lenin, and it fell cold across
the steel masters. It was convenient to think that the steel
strike was an echo of Soviet Russia.

There were a great many people who had a great desire
to prove that Russian money was behind the steel strike
and that “German gold” was behind Russia, that one could
hate the workers’ inconvenient revolt openly and com-
pletely. |

91

92 Men and Steel

No one seemed disturbed that the workers’ liberties were

taken from them. A Roman Catholic Priest and a Lutheran
clergyman lifted up their voices. That was all.

The comfortable people whom I met talked about pro- 4

duction. The country needed it; now the workers were :

stopping it, they said, because of outside agitators. ‘The
material from which this strike was made lay before them

in plain view. It was easy to learn. One might see it dis-

played in every meeting of the men; one could find out
about it by going through the towns. After a while I had
the impression that the world in which the steel workers
lived was invisible to most of the comfortable people. One
of the comfortable people said to me: |

“The slums of the steel towns are awful. You don’t have
to look for them; the street cars run right through them.

“The steel companies have made an incredible amount of
money. ‘To see how money is squandered is disgusting.
Every little girl thinks she.must have her electric car and
a thousand dollar fur coat.

“But I think Judge Gary is right. I admire his stand. :

Every man has a right to run his business as he pleases.’-

The Convention

A convention of the Pennsylvania State Federation of
Labor came together to demand that the Governor restore
the civil liberties to the people. In the Labor Temple you
could find out at that time what labor in Pennsylvania
looked like. These were not business agents; these were

F Outside Peovpie 93

the workers, miners and carpenters, plumbers and men
from the building trades; men doing every kfnd of labor
that is performed in the state. They filled the hall; they
filled the gallery. No state convention was ever so large.

The orators who had come to enthuse them remained to
quiet them. James Maurer had to use a strong hand to
hold them. Their resistance clothed itself in words and
acts. This convention was something new. This was the
first time that a unit of the American Federation of Labor
had come together for political ends. They had come with
a threat of using their combined power to protect the liber-
ties of the workers.

“We want to know,” they said, “if the Constitution of
the United States exists for the privileged classes only, or
if it applies to us too.”

The first resolution was that steel, coal, and the railways
should not settle their difficulties independently. This was
a demand for a closer unity, a foreshadowing of a power
to come when the wish in this resolution should be ex-
pressed in mighty action. In the convention you could
see labor feeling its way to a new power.

One man spoke against this resolution. His name was
Feeley. He was voted from the floor. At his words pan-
demonium broke loose. It was hard for Maurer to quiet
the men. They called Feeley “stool pigeon.”” They wanted
him recalled. The sense of that meeting was that coal,
steel, and iron belonged together, and that they should use
their power together. Feeley’s opposition brought the

94 Men ond Gtuel

Nair

convention to a climax. While they met they did not lose
their tension. | oa

The steel strike had left the mills; it had left the river
bottoms. Because the workers had been ridden down by
the Constabulary, because they had been unjustly arrested
in numbers, because the employers had pledged themselves
to break organized labor, because the Attorney General
had commended mob action in the steel towns—labor in the
entire state of Pennsylvania rediscovered the maxim that
an injury to one is the concern of all. Because of the
injury done to the striking steel workers, labor asserted
itself. The workers of Pennsylvania voted the recom-
mendation of a general strike if the liberties of the people
were not returned to them.

The workers put a dream into a resolution at this con-
vention. It was the dream of the solidarity of labor.

Outside People 95
Quiet Towns

The steel towns had no news of what was going on in

the Convention Hall. The papers in the steel towns did
not speak of the convention. The mass of steel workers
did not know that labor was having a convention for them.
There were many towns where they learned it only through
a meager strike bulletin. There were many strikers who
knew nothing about it. The steel towns in Alleghany
County were mufiled in silence. The workers could never
tell how the strike was going in those towns. The news
came from the other side. The papers told the workers
that the strike was over. The bosses told them the strike
_was over. Tradesmen told them to go back to work.
Silence followed the violence of the Constabulary. Inac-
tion and silence wrapped the strike around.
In Monessen and Donora, in Rankin, Homestead, and
Braddock, the mills always made smoke. Some men in
Allegheny County always went to work. The strike went
on underground. There was no drifting population on the
street. In their homes and in their meetings there was an
ominous quiet. The quiet was the quiet of terror.

Terror and suspicion hung over these towns like a thick
cloud. But the strike went on, as though like a living thing
it had a life of its own. It did not live in meetings, it
could not live in the congregations of men, it had no expres-
sion, but underneath the silent terror flowed the current
of the strike. After a time this seemed the normal way of
living. After a time I forgot that there were places where

workers were allowed to discuss their affairs.

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PART THREE
SILENCE

CHAPTER XI

DARK TOWNS
Mother Jones

- OTHER JONES wove in and out of the steel
strike. She was never long away. During her
absence from Pittsburg one could hear of her

yo
being in Joliet or in the Calumet Basin. She had greater
nis

- intimacy with the workers than any one else in America.

‘4

She is their “Mother.”
The foreign workers rarely meet Americans. The only

oa,
ee

(Americans that some meet are bosses, landlords or trades-
- Mother Jones is the only American woman that thou-
oh sands of them have ever spoken to. She goes about sur-
_ rounded with the protecting love of young men whose
_ names she does not know. She goes up and down the coun-
_ try, and with her walks the memory of the long fight of
_ the working people of America. It is a matter of record
_ that her home is wherever there is a fight for justice. No
Minor prophet ever foretoia the downfall of an arrogant
city in bitterer words than she foretells the downfall of
what she calls “the ruling powers.”

When the convention ended I went with Mother Jones

99

Pm

100 Men and Steel 4

»

to Ohio. She sat beside me in the train talking; she talked —
almost as to herself. You might fancy that you heard the
heart of the workers muttering. '

“There was never a convention like this hefore. They :
never met before to talk only about liberty. Oh, it’s com=-"
ing; it’s coming! .. . There's a terrible bitter tide rolling ©
up and welling up in this country. There’s gall mixed with —
the mud that’s churned under the workers’ feet in the city
alleys.
“Look at these towns; tock out of the window. Nothing
to rest the eyes. I say to you there has never been a
crueler despotism than there is in this country to-day.
Look out there! Look at the stacks of the mills like trees
in a black forest! Lock at the blast furnaces and smoke
as far as your eye can reach, and the wealth that comes
out of it made by the blood of slaves.”

She cannot endure the suffering of the workers’ children.
She cannot endure the indifference of rich women. The
two in her mind are sharply related. The indifferent
women are blood-stained creatures to her. Brutal, cruel,
abandoned, she makes you feel this. Exaggerations in her
mouth become real. She talks about “Brutal women hung
about with the decorations they have bought with the blood
of children.” This is to her a literal fact.

“Oh, God, the little children—to face it all! And our
women are so brutal. They don’t dream that in the
great upheaval that’s coming, their own children will meet
with the same conditions. Then people go to church!
‘They're mad as they were in the days of Babylon!”

ry

; i Dark Towns 101

Steubenville

it, We got to Steubenville. The clang of trolleys, the shriek
a railways, noise and bustle, the bright green eyes of
ie ag stores, red brick blocks—this is Steubenville’s Main
is Street. Off the Main Street is the Secretary’s office of the
Steelworkers’ Committee. Here the strike flowed above
) P na Posters were hung in public places of Steu-
eb aville saying Mother Jones was going to speak. I felt
y "that I had come back from Pennsylvania to America; the
| : _ terror was lifted. In the organizer’s oflice a union painter
was asking for permission to keep his contract.

Ei " “If I don’t keep my contract, the chimneys will rust.”

fe BAN is strange to see life ebb out of the industry when
a e men flowed out of the mills by the Ohio River. The
fires were banked; the industry was dead. In Fallonsby,
‘ 7M ingo, down into Wheeling and Bellaires, and the sur-
| we unig towns, there were only dead furnaces, empty
oe
ne | They looked as though they had been deserted for years.

_ I asked the Steubenville organizer: ““What do you do to
4 ep alive the enthusiasm among the men?”

Rune don’t have to do aay Es he answered. “The

ills, dark towns. Already the furnaces looked extinct.

102 | Men and Steel
Meeting in Mingo

The meeting was in Mingo, the meagerest of steel towns.
‘The mills, the workers—that is all. The meeting was in
the town hall, a rickety building. We rode there in a
bumping jitney around sharp curves, following the road
which had been carved on the hillside above the river.
Below is the dark bulk of the mills, whose black chimneys
have been eaten by rust.

Mother Jones stood on a raised platform in the middle
of the room. The hall was crowded with steel workers.
Most of them stood. A few sat on benches. They crowded
up to the platform. They stood there with upturned faces
full of a mute devotion.

She is their mother in truth. She is the mother of the
revolt in their souls. The hall was full of men who could
not understand her words. What difference does it make
what words she used? They understood her anger. Her
defiance and her fearlessness they understood too. Their
lack of knowledge of her words stripped her meaning to
the fiery essentials.

It seemed wonderful to hear her say without police inter-
ference what she wanted to say. It was a great satisfac-
tion to see a labor meeting in a town hall.

There was a ripple of uneasiness. Slips of paper were
being passed from hand to hand. Something had hap-
pened. I went to the secretary through the crowd. He
shoved a roll of leaflets in my hand. The leaflets were an

Dark Towns 103

appeal to the workers to protest against the blockade of
Russia.

“Lucky I saw that,’ he said. “Lucky I got ’em in time.
Can’t have things like that circulated here.”

Above our heads Mother Jones was talking about Free-
dom and the solidarity of the workers.

“Why not?” I asked.

He looked at me despairingly. He was frightened.

“Why, they’d take it back to the Polish Priesc! We'd
have the state troops down on us in no time. They'd call
us Bolsheviks!”
_ Mother Jones stopped speaking. Applause broke out.
‘She plowed through the crowd to us. She read the leafiet.
“Well, what’s the matter with it?” she asked. “Can’t
you protest about the blockading of women and children?”
_ The organizer pleaded with her. ‘You don’t know what
its like here. I’m afraid they’ll stamp us out.” She
- snatched the word from him.
“Afraid? There’s only one thing you should be afraid
of—of not being a man!”

104 Men and Steel
Weirton

_ Perhaps Mother Jones was too harsh to the organizer. 4
The next day I heard from him that terror sniffs greedily
on the outskirts of Steubenville. In Pennsylvania terror
walks openly around. The strike flows underground. In
Ohio the strike walks openly on the streets. Terror lurkae
out of sight. _But it does not flow underground everywhere —
in Ohio. The organizer of Steubenville told me about the
town of Weirton. This town is not incorporated. It has
no charter. It belongs to a steel company. He gave me
some afiidavits of steel workers.

“Read these and you will see why I acted like I did
last night,” he said. “They searched the workers’ houses.
If they found any Socialist literature they railroaded them
out of town. They took them out of bed at night. It made
no difference that they owned their houses. It made no
difference that their children were there. If we speak of
Russia they holler ‘Revolution’ and will call in the troops
on us.” .

Chio and Pennsylvania are not-much different after all.
It was a matier of degree.

Thought had become socially peliiohs in both states.
For all steel workers it was perilous to have socialistic
opinions. Working people on strike had been forbidden to
think together about starving and blockaded Russia. Their
thoughts had been blockaded. It was dangerous for them
to ask, “Why should we starve Russian children?”

oe
4 ae
ie

Dark Towns 105

Pensions

In the steel towns of Allegheny County, for all their foul
slums, the brick houses shoulder each other in friendly
fashion and there is fellowship in the welter of life which
pours through the courts and alleys. But the smaller steel

‘towns on the Ohio River are God-forgotten. The flavor

‘ ‘of life there is that of stale hopelessness. The houses are
: down-at-the-heels. The streets are deep in mud. I walked

down the streets of such a town with the organizer.
“I want to stop in,’ he said, “and see an old fellow.

_ He’s scabbing, but he can’t help it.”

The mills here made a pretense of work. The “white

_ collar crew’ and the foremen kept the furnaces alive.

There were, too, a few “loyal men.”
“This old fellow,” said the organizer, “he feels so bad

~ at what he’s doing, I drop in just to cheer him up. He's

an old union man. He belonged to the Sons of Vulcan and

he was an Amalgamated man. He’s within six months of

getting his pension. He comes to me and he says, ‘Son,

_ Ive been a union man all my life. Whatll I do? My

pensions six months off.’ I said to him, ‘Pa, you keep

right on working.’ It wasn’t regular of me, but it didn’t

seem right to ask him to give up everything he had. One
of his sons was killed in the steel works. His other one’s

got a parcel of children. He and his old woman are count-

_ ing on the pension.”

We picked our way through the mud and stopped by a
meager iframe house. One of the shutters hung awry in a

Bey

106 Men and Steel

dismal fashion. The house was not more dilapidated than By

its neighbors. All the houses in this row had something ©
wrong. We went inside. An old man sat listlessly by ~

the window.

“Howdy,” he said.

“How are you, John?” said the organizer.

“So so,’ he answered without looking up.

“How are you, Ma?”

“Oh, I’m fair,’ the old woman answered, her anxious
eyes on the organizer's face.

The talk lagged. There was no light in that house. It
was as if some unseen thing,lay dead amongst us. The
thing that was dead was the man’s pride in himself. We
rose to go. The old man bade us a listless good-by. He
did not look at us. His wife followed us to the door.

““His heart’s broke,” she said. “He can’t rest. He talks
in his sleep that he’s a scab.”

Tamo Daleko

In Steubenville is a Serbian colony crowded in wooden
houses near the mills. These houses have the slack, neg-
lected air of steel town houses. Humanity bursts out from

their doors. But the great Serbian holiday, Kossova day, ~

was celebrated in this town. In this town the Serbs also
celebrate the day which their families embraced Chris-
tianity. On such a day they give a Slava—a great feast.
The memory of their oppression by the Turks is fresh.
Their national independence is recent. Their age-long
fight against the Turks lives in their songs.

Dark Towns 107

I stood waiting to cross the noisy street. Trucks slam-
banged past. The engine on the railway overhead hooted.
A man beside me was whistling. He was whistling Tamo
Daleko, the song which the Serbs sang in exile. After the
great defeat in 1915 by the Austrians they retreated over

_ the Ibar Pass, they went over the Albanian hills. They

went to Corfu. They reconstructed their regiments and

when every one thought Serbia dead, Serbian regiments

reappeared on the Bulgarian front. Tamo Daleko was the
song for a defeated nation. But the Serbs sang it when
they marched to victory. |

“Where did you learn that song?” I asked him.

“In Corfu. My father was a Serb in the Banat. When
war come I go home. I march on the great retreat.”

“How did you get back here?” I asked him.

“IT get wounded on Monastir front. I am American citi-
zen. ‘They send me home from France.”

“Are you striking?” I asked him.

The jam of the street loosened up. He strode on ahead.
He threw at me over his shoulder,

“Sure I strike.”

From his abundant gayety he turned to wave at me and
went off singing to win the strike. His smile had the
assurance of victory.

He made me understand the strike. The brothers of
these men working in the steel mills had overthrown Czar
and Austrian Kaiser. In America they fought Gary.

108 Men and Steel

Johnstown

Here and there on the Ohio River some mill was flying a
smoke streamer. Some towns on Monongahela did not

strike. But Youngstown was dark as a pocket and Johns-

town was shut down flat. Johnstown lies in a cup of hills. 4

The Cambria Steel Company is the core of the town. From
the railway station I looked down into the yards. Rust

was over all. Piles of scrap covered with rust, mounds of ©

billets covered with rust, carloads of pig-iron covered with —

rust. Paint scaling from black chimneys. Rust crawling ©

up chimneys. In this yard nothing stirred. There was no

sign of life.

A man walked slowly through the empty yard. It was —

startling to see anything move through that quiet place,

through the mounds of iron on which rust had fallen like

a red snow. It seemed the graveyard of industry. Johns-
town’s men had left the mills in rust and silence. Around
the mills crowded wooden houses, desolate and blackened

by years of falling soot.

The main street is noisy. The stores are full of cheap,

bright colored things; stores with violent colored clothing,
stores with shiny furniture. Windows full of enamel

kitchen ware. All the things the workers’ wives want,

shiny and new. Up and down walked groups of idle steel

workers, big men drifting on the slack tide of idleness into
the hall of their headquarters. Cambria Steel shut down.

For eight weeks nothing moving and nothing making, and

ead

Dark Towns 109

for eight weeks the encroaching rust thickening on the
billets, crawling stealthily up the black chimneys.

During the first week in November a quarter of a million
steel workers were still on strike. There was power and
discipline in the self-control and quiet of the strikers. The
roots of the strike went deep.

CHAPTER XII

SILENCE
The Miner’s Son

ROM Wheeling and the other dark towns in West
Virginia, and Ohio, I traveled back to Pennsyl-
vania, a rangy, blunt featured lad for seat com-
panion. I judged him to be about nineteen. We talked.
“I’d been visiting my folks in West Virginia,” he said.
“My Paw’s a miner.”
“Is he on strike?” I asked.
“Ahaw,” the boy answered.
“There’s been trouble in your part of the country.”
“There's been trouble, but they won’t touch Paw, for
he’s just staying home. They’re all staying home.”
“What do you do?’ I asked.
““A steel worker.”
OW here ?’’
“In the Edgar Thompson mills in Braddock.”
“You're on strike too, then?”
He looked away. “There ain’t any strike in our mill,”
“Why did you go home?”
“Oh, work was slack. It was a good time to go.”
“Work was slack because of the strike.”
110

Silence 111

“Aw, it’s nothing but a Hunky strike. The Hunkies
walked out. They don’t know what they want. They
don’t know what they’re striking for. It’s all over now,
anyhow,’ he hurried on.

We were traveling along the Ohio River. The air was
clear of smoke, the mills’ fires were banked. The strike
was flung across the country.

“It never was nothing but a Hunky strike,” the boy per-
sisted into my silence.

“You were never a union man?”

“No,” he said. “You don’t get on if you join the union.”

“What does your father think about your scabbing?”

He looked away again. He shuffled uneasily.

-“Paw—he don’t know about it. I never told him there

was a strike to our mill—and there ain’t now any more.”
y

I thought about this boy a great deal. ‘Thousands of
workers were still striking in Braddock. They didn’t exist
for him. They were Hunkies. This strike was a mass
movement. It was a rank and file strike.

Youngstown was dark. Johnstown Mills were rusted,
Wheeling was closed and Steubenville idle. The strike
held in South Chicago. Messages came from the striking
steel workers in Alabama and Colorado. But this boy
who worked in the Edgar Thompson Mills didn’t admit
that the strike existed. He had been told that it “was
over for all but a handful of Hunkies,”’ by the bosses and

by all the newspapers he saw.

So he went around carrying word that the strike was
over. He believed it. He had to. Since his father was

112 : Men and Steel

a union man he could not have felt it right to scab even on
Hunkies. ' a
So he believed the strike was over as the people out in :
the world believed it. zm .
The Americans in the steel mills are skilled workers.
They stayed aloof. They minimized the strike. — They
called it off in their own minds. They helped the silence.
A Slavish organizer said to me bitterly:
“They are too proud to strike with Hunkies. Theil
not too proud to scab. with negroes.”

The Smothered Strike

It was through this boy’s talk that the knowledge began
to seep in on me of how powerful a weapon silence is.

Silence ebbed up around the strikers in a stealthy smoth-
ering tide. People outside thought the strike was broken.

A labor man from San Francisco stopped over to see
Foster. |

“You're winding up the strike now, aren’t you?” he said.

That is what the labor people thought in San Francisco.
News didn’t get out. Silence covered everything. Sup-—
pression and silence like a cloud had settled down over the
strike area. The papers had called off the strike in saying
that the strike was over. The fight of these men still on |
strike didn’t exist. From the outside the strike appeared |
_ dark as the towns. The public thought it was over. The
only news of it appeared in obscure corners of financial |

Silence 113

columns. Hidden away from the ordinary reader was the
news that steel was not being made.

In those days one went out of the strike area from an
atmosphere of hope to one of unbelief and depression. In
Pittsburg it was hard to realize how stifling was the
silence that. surrounded the strike.

From visiting the dark towns I went to New York.
In New York I had dinner with some labor sympathizers.

“Too bad the steel strike is going so badly,” they said.

With some editors friendly to organized labor I talked
about some articles. They thought the strike was a dead
issue. Workers, editors, men who sympathized with labor,
thought the strike was over.

I had come from the dark towns. I had seen close to
the patient fabric of the strike. But what I had seen was
locked within me. There was no means of telling it to
any one.

What Everybody Knew

Before the strike began every one in America knew two
things about the steel workers.

One was they were rich. Fabulously rich. They got
fifty dollars a day. They all lived in steam-heated cottages
with hot and cold running water.

The papers said so.

The farmers envied the steel workers. I found this out
when I went to visit my own family.

“What are the steel workers striking about?” they
wanted to know. “They’ve got everything they need.

114 Men and Steel 4

They’re better off than we.’ My family thought that most
steel workers rode to work in their own cars. They thought —
that all steel workers’ wives wore fur coats. |

Every one knew that Foster was “red.’”’ There was an
idea current that Foster had led out the contented steel
workers on strike. He had led them out by hundreds of
thousands. They would have been all right if he had let
them alone.

Every one condemned the strike leadership.

Now every one thought that the strike of the steel
workers was over.

The papers said so.

A good thing too. |

To all the public of America nothing of the strikers’
struggle or their reason for striking penetrated. The steel
workers shouted out to the world for understanding, but it
was as though they cried inside a vacuum. No one heard.
No one knew what had happened. No one knew what these
three hundred thousand men had struck for. No one

knew the strike was still on.

English Workers

Sometimes it seemed like a joke on the public. What
becomes of “demecratic public opinion” when the steel
masters do the publicity? And without this public opinion
how are we to settle our disputes?

Silence was a strange work of hate to visit on the men
who made wealth for the country, whose only crime was

Silence 115

to ask for conditions which the government gives its em-
_ployees, the conditions which England’s steel workers have
long since had. The English steel workers sent this cable
to the steel workers of America:

“On behalf of the one hundred and fifty thousand British
Iron and Steel Workers who already enjoy all and more
than you are asking for and who through joint representa-
tion of employers and workmen’s organizations have the
most successful machinery of industrial negotiations in the
world, we send warmest wishes for the success of your
fight on behalf of the workers in American Iron and Steel
industry. By the refusal of the representatives of the Steel
Corporation to submit dispute to arbitration, the corpora-
tion stands condemned.”

During the beginning of the American steel strike, the
railway workers of England struck also. I had a letter
from England which described what happened in England.
A great building was turned into publicity headquarters.
An army of voluntary workers got together to explain to
all England what the strike was about; Masters of Balliol
and Dons of Cambridge writing for the strike, explaining,
bringing light, telling the people what it was about, cre-
ating understanding. Artists and writers of England,
economists and journalists, all working with the railway
men, striving to create understanding between them and
the public.

Between the steel workers of this country and such
understanding stood the United States Steel Corporation,
whose most powerful weapon was this deadening silence.

(116 Men and Steel

For days the only news of the steel strike that was carried,
and it was carried in headlines, was that a bomb plot had
been unearthed in Gary, and that the authorities knew who
the authors of the plot were. The news of this plot died.
It had no sequel. No one was arrested. There was no
bomb plot. But in the mind of the public there remained
the belief that the steel workers were dangerous people.
Dangerous and rich!

The Publicity Department

The link between the steel strikers and the public was
the Publicity Director of the Steel Strike. This was the
grand sounding name that they gave Edwin Newdick. One
would suppose he had a staff working under him. He had
no staff. He was the Publicity Department. If he ever
had help it was casual and voluntary. ,

Edwin Newdick gave the news out to the papers. He
saw the reporters. Every day news from the striking
towns streamed in. Secretaries wrote letters telling the
news. The news was digested, rewritten, sent out. There
was one stenographer to help. At first even the mimeo-
graphing was done in the office. The Publicity Director
and any one who chose to, ground off mimeographed copies
of the news until the lights went out.

The Publicity Director also had the morale of the strike —
as his care. Strike bulletins went out three times a week.
They were translated into six languages. All these things,
the news for the public, the news for the labor papers, the

Silence 117

news for the secretaries and organizers, the bulletins
addressing the strikers, the Publicity Director did them all.
The immense strike and this one man to get news back and
forth. It could not have been otherwise. The money had
to be spent for bread for the workers.

Few friendly writers came to report the strike, but there
were many hostile ones. The big publicity department of
the United States Steel Corporation did its work thor-
oughly and did its work well.

The Letter From Alabama

The Publicity Department sent information to isolated
people who wrote in for news. There was not money
' enough nor men enough to distribute the news to all the
strikers. Every day people wrote to ask for news. Every
day letters came like that of the boy in Alabama:

“T am Still In Doubt about the Steel Strike Situation.

“Ts the Strike Still on ore has It Been called off.

“IT Dont Beleive the Lying News Papers.

“If the Strike is over I Want to come North and get
away from this yellow Bunch of Scabs.

“IT was Working in the Carp Dept. of T. C. I. R. R. Co.
and about 95 Percent of Carman and Helpers come out.
But the Ensley Steel Mill never Lost 15 minutes on ac-
count of Strike. All the men that come out on Strike in
the Car Dept. that had 4 years Experience got good jobs
on the Railroads without any trouble.

“But the Helpers are the unfortunate ones.

Lis: Men and Steel

“I had 3 years experience and the Foremans on these
main Lines Said I would have to Start all over again
Before I could get a Rate.

“And I don’t think It is Right. Besides I could Not

Live on 29c. a hr. Just such things as that is Driving a

Lot of men Back to the U. S. Steel Corporation for Em-

ployment.

“if the B. R. C. of A. cared to Help the Steel Strikers —

they would manage some way to Put these Carman Helpers
to Work Without Loseing their age. U.S. Steel Corpora-

tion put my Mother out of one of their houses that She ©

had been Living in for 14 years Because me and my

Brother Struck and If there is any Way that I can keep

from faceing them Dogs and telling them I am Sorry Il
did Not Scab on for them, I don’t Want to do It. they
oun Every thing around here that is Worth owning and If
I Don’t get a job With the union Railroads Soon I am
going. to have to face them or Lose Everything I got in
my house. Well I will close. Any Information you can
give me will Be appreciated.” |

All the strike was in that letter. There were men like
this everywhere, men who faced ruin, men who wouldnt
scab, men so isolated that they didn’t know whether the
strike was called off or not. It showed, too, that their
greatest enemy was silence. It was worse than violence.
It was worse than white terror.

Silence 119
Espionage

Some of the Americans struck even in Allegheny County.
I knew the wife of one, a roller. He was an [Irish-
American like herself. They had a pretty home, a flat
that had nice painted floors with improvements. They
had a piano.

“We'll have to move from here,” she said. “They'll
never take him back after the strike. He’ll be blacklisted.
You don’t know what they make you suffer for being a
union man in a town like this if you’re an American. Oh,
it’s awful to live amongst spies! They talk about the Cos-
sacks, but it’s the spies that’s bad. Tim never knows who’s
a friend. There is some one always watching. There’s
some one always trying to ferret out if a fellow holds a
union card. I’ll be glad to go. I'll be glad to live any-
where where I’m not spied on. When any one comes to
see him, we never know whether he’s a friend or if he’s
come to worm something out of Tim. I tell you it’s an
awful way to live when you don’t know who your friends
are. It’s an awful way to live when people come friendly
like, only to squeal on you. They found Tim out. They
fired him. That was before the strike. He was helping
in the organizing campaign. Then they tried to get him
back. He wouldn’t go. There’s women afraid to be seen
talking to me—because my husband’s a Union man. They’re
afraid a spotter’ll see us talking together. There’s a free
country for you! I tell you there’s no such thing for a
Onion man in the steel towns.”

CHAPTER XIII
COMMISSARY
‘Polish Sivkore

‘sis five weeks the strikers had nothing. They had

been eating their skins. They lived on their say-

ings. Some who had no savings existed from hand ~

to mouth. Sometimes they picked up a chance bit of work,
sometimes they were helped by their friends.

Then commissary stores were formed. Every strike —
town had such a store. Here strikers who needed it could
come for groceries. The groceries were not for every one.
There was not money enough to feed 250,000 strikers and
their families. A narrow line had to be drawn between
those actually in want and those nearly in want. When a
striker applied for relief, one of the strike committee went
around to talk the matter over with the family. I went
around Pittsburg with a Polish steel worker making such
visits of investigation.

It was not easy to find the places where the strikers
lived. We went down black alleys, we passed refuse dumps
that looked as though they had always been there. Layer
on layer of refuse lay packed and rotting. The refuse
dumps looked contemporaneous with a scaling, dilapidated

10

Commissary 121

meeting house, which in its undignified old age had become
a storehouse. It was falling to pieces. The paint had
scaled from its pillars. Everything in that neighborhood
was falling to pieces. This corner of Pittsburg told
_Pittsburg’s history. The mild red brick of the houses had
been blackened with the Pittsburg smoke. When these
old-time inhabitants had gone to church in the meeting
house, well-to-do comfortable families then lived a family
in a house. Now a family lived in almost every room.

We found the house we were looking for. We had to
bend down to get in because laundry was hanging thick
in the front hall. We went down a flight of stairs which
led to a back yard. The yard was bricked over and littered
with débris. It was separated from the other yards by
high blackened wooden palings. A stinking privy stood
in one corner. The yard was as cheerful as a well, but
the children played here.

We went into a room giving flush on the yard. It was
clean and bleak. On each side of the stove were two chairs
without backs. There was a table. A mechanical cradle
rocked a baby to and fro—tick-tack, tick-tack. There were
two other chairs in the room. That was all. There were
curtains at the window that were patched and darned, and
in spite of the invading grime, they were white.

The woman called her husband from an inner room.
The room in which we stood had been the kitchen in the
old days when this had been a private house. The room
from which her husband came had been the coal cellar.
It had no ventilation. Here in this cellar they slept—

122 Men and Steel

they and their four children. In some steel workers’ houses
_ are the evidences of better wages, a comfortable sofa, a
sewing machine, a new stove. Here there was no sign of
such well-being. Bare walls and emptiness—that was all.
Babies coming in such rapid succession had eaten up all
this man could earn.

For a while they talked together in Polish. The con-
versation between the member of the strike committee and
the man and his wife was earnest. They never smiled.
Through it all ran the rippling laughter of the children.
These people had brought with them such sound blood that
their children were gay and bonny end full of laughter.
They were three, four, and five years old. There was a
baby of eleven months.

“They’ve decided,” said my guide, ‘‘that they could wait —
three weeks more before they come to the commissary.”

They had nothing and they could wait three weeks more.
The endurance of women was a bulwark of the steel strike.
Women like this, young and burdened down by the cares of
their children, upheld it. Women who live without diver-
sion, isolated by poverty from all that is beautiful in life,
women whose eyes rest on nothing that is fair except the
faces of their children, sacrificed for the strike. There —
were hundreds of women and thousands of them scattered
through the steel towns who made up their minds that they —
could hold out a little longer, another week, two weeks
more. One remembered them when one saw the commis-
sary at work.

Commissary 123
The Strike Woman

During this time I went with Father Kazinci to see one
of his parishioners.

“That woman,” he said, “should go to the Commissary.
She’s too tired to work as she does.”

As the door opened a smell of suds enveloped us.
The room was full of clothes. I have no memory of the
furniture of the house. The tubs of water, the baskets
of clothes, the heavy men’s clothes drying on the line,
hid everything else. On the floor there were puddles of
water. More clothes were boiling on the stove.

You could not tell if the woman who had answered the
door was young or old. She was tired even beyond em-
barrassment. Her dress was slopped with water and her
hair was wet from the steaming tub which she had just
left.

“Excuse, Father,’ she said. “The pails are so heavy
when I come from the court I spill some always.”

_“Haven’t you gone to the Commissary?”

“Not yet, Father.”

“Are you going?”

“Not yet, Father. I wash for boarders.”

“How many boarders?” |

“Four. They sleep upstairs; me down.”

The baby woke up and began to cry. She hushed it
mechanically.

“It’s too much for you, so many boarders,’ Father
Kazinci said.

124 Men and Steel

“How shall I live through the strike without boarders?”
she asked him, hushing the baby on her damp shoulder.
“It’s always so; it’s always strike. Without boarders how
shall I live since I come to this country? I come nine years
ago. There is a strike in New York. By and by they
lose. My husband get a letter from a friend. He says
there is work in the mines. We go to the mines. Not
far from here, Father, that was. ‘There come a strike
right away.”

“You've been in strikes almost all the time.”

aa Gs Pi

“How did you get on?”

She deserted the difficult English for her own language.
Finding some consolation in his mute sympathy, she talked
on monotonously. She was without protest as she sat and
told of one strike after another, of bearing children and
losing them, as one might speak of storms at sea. Strikes
seemed to her normal. Strikes had followed her for nine
years in her wanderings around America. She seemed like
a stupid woman. She had the uncomplaining quality of a
tired beast of burden.

I said to her, “I should think you would be tired of
strikes.”

Suddenly from her depths there flamed out at me-her
inner conviction. “If we don’t strike what will happen to
our children? It will always be the same for us working

33

people if we do not keep together

Commissary 125
Commissary in Braddock

In every striking steel town there was a headquarters
where the people came for their strike rations. Any child
on the street could tell you where the Commissary was.
In Braddock the Commissary was in the basement of the
parochial school which was built by Father Kazinci. Men
passed, big parcels of food in their arms. Two children
were tugging their basket up a narrow basement stairs.
Groups of people were standing around. The basement
was crowded. In the middle stood counters made of boards
and trestles. All around barrels of potatoes, pyramids of
canned goods. The smell of coffee was in the air; piles
of good bread ready to be given out. Two men were
weighing out the rations of potatoes; ten pounds for half
a week for a family of six.

A low buzz of conversation filled the place. Two boys
and their father packed up their food. Others stood
patiently waiting their turn. It was a long line; Central
Eurepe packed together, Pole, Slovak, Croat, Roumanian,
Italian. All could have gone back to work had they chosen;
there was no picket line in Braddock to shame them. There
was everything to drive them back. Almost all of these
men had large families.

Sometimes you see children with the pinched look of
the starved Austrian children. I asked one boy how old
he was. He answered, fifteen. He looked about twelve.

“We have six other children in our family, not counting
the new baby.”

cco

126 Men and Steel

There were plenty of new babies born during the strike. ©

Many women faced having a new baby with nothing but
the Commissary between them and starvation. There were
so many young babies that a special milk fund was raised

in Pittsburg so that the strike babies might be looked

after. |
I saw Gent, the local secretary, talking with one of the
men. ‘The man thought a moment, and then put back

some of his rations. In Braddock and in many other —

towns the Commissary had over one-third more for people
than had been planned. Those who had smaller families
were asked to take only exactly what they needed. So
with sacrifices piled on sacrifices the people were fed, the
Commissary line grew. I watched them file past, pack
their rations of potatoes, bread, beans, bacon, coffee, milk
and sirup, leaving some behind when they could.

A woman with sharp shining eyes came up. She began
wheedling for an extra can of tomatoes. Her voice had an
indescribable mixture of mockery and impudence. She was
a Gypsy woman unmistakably.

“She’d make off with an extra can of tomatoes behind
your back,” the organizer said, as she threw back some
laughing mockery over her shoulder. “But there’s one
thing those folks don’t do—they don’t scab.”

Commissary 127
Strike Relief Money

The money for this food came from ali over America.
Some was contributed by the Internationals, but as the
rank and file were the backbone of the strike, so the rank
and file of labor supported the steel workers’ commissary
stores. Small unions in obscure towns voted the pay of a
day's work to the steel workers. Working women sent
in small sums. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America gave one hundred thousand dollars. This is an
organization outside of the American Federation of Labor.
When the receipt was sent from Washington headquarters
of the A. F. of L. no letter of thanks was received from
the Washington officials.

The steel strike, which extended over such a great area,
now flowed out further and bound together the workers
of North and South. It was a great work to feed so many
workers. This money was contributed by individual sac-
rifices.

128 Men and Stee!
Meaning of the Strike

The Commissary in Braddock was over for the day. I
sat with Father Kazinci in his living room. The room is
oval. In one end a platform is raised up two steps above —
the room. From this eminence the Fathers sit and lock
over Braddock. The hill descends sharply from this point;
St. Michael’s Church is below, then Main Street. Beyond
that the mill chimneys with their heavy crown of coiling
smoke and the squalor of the first ward. Further the
sudden river bank, almost as red as the mounds of red
ore in the mill yards.

We sat a while in quiet. Father Kazinci spoke:

“How do they do it?’ he wondered. He spoke imper-
sonally, as though to himself. ‘What gives them their
fortitude? All these men we saw to-day are doing some-
thing cruelly difficult, something which takes the highest
courage. They stay out and see negro strike-breakers take
their jobs. Think what sacrifice every day means, what
desperate resistance. These people have given up their
income voluntarily. They have risked their jobs, their
only source of income.

“Our people have laid by money in the bank. They
are not gamblers with chance like Americans. The future
is a vivid thing to them. They fear old age, they fear
sickness, they know that lockouts come. They know the
mills shut down. They insure against these things by pain-
ful savings. They never touch that sacred insurance fund
against disaster; it is inviolate. They are now using these

Commissary 129

_ savings, the fruit of their self-denial. They are pouring
the money out; they are pouring it out on the altar of
liberty—liberty to join their own unions, freedom from the
twelve-hour day. Think of them—hundreds and thousands
of them making these sacrifices together. People have to
think a cause just to do such things. They have to believe
in it with all their hearts. They have to have courage.
It takes courage for a single man to do this. Think what
it means for men with children. Think what it means for
women to stand back of their men. I go among my people.
_ I see them holding out. I wonder how they do it. I won-
der at the force within me.

- “But they’re striking for a better life for their children.
They're through with espionage that boycotts union men.
They want to put an end to this dehumanizing double shift.
Why, do you know, a Braddock mill superintendent
stopped one of my people on the street the other day. He
was an old-timer, a faithful worker. The mill superin-
tendent was surprised to see him idle.

“*Aren’t you working?’ he asked.

**No, I’m not working.’

“Why not?’

““T’m on strike; I’m taking a holiday. I’m paying my-
self back those twenty Christmases I worked for the com-
pany.’

“But even such things don’t explain their courage. I
tell you the history of this steel strike is the history of the
endurance of men and women.”

CHAPTER XIV

ANONYMOUS PEOPLE

The Strike Baby ;

NONYMOUS people like these women willing to

A wait for the Commissary made the backbone of the

strike. There were plenty who were cowards at

heart. There were plenty who were waiting to sneak back.

Not all people were unselfish about the Commissary, plenty
of strikers were willing to take all they could get.

The courageous minority stiffened the morale of the
wavering ones. They were to be found everywhere.

Through making visits with Father Kazinci I got to
know what sort of people carried the strike on their backs.
These were people like Yanski and his wife.

There was a door in the first ward that I often noticed.
Its inner panels were green as spring, with a border vivid
russet. It was the most hopeful thing in that drab neigh-
borhood, a signal to the world—“Happy people live here.”

Everything in this house matched that painted door,
beginning with the woman who opened it. The walls had
been freshly painted. The holy pictures made violent
splashes of red against the new paint. In the back room
was a bed of majestic size. I never saw such a magnificent

130

Anonymous People 131

bed. It was shining brass. It had crocheted coverings.
The coverings were lined with bright blue. There was
blue ribbon on the pillows, and they were covered with
embroidered pillow shams. Beside the bed was a cradle.
_ This, too, was beribboned, and in it lay a very little baby.

“That baby,” the woman explained, “is the strike baby.
The strike was a fine time for me to have a baby. Yanski
is home. You see, Father, it was like this. The strike is
a bad time; it is a bad thing that a man shall not be at
work and that he shall spend his money so he may get his
rights. Yanski and I talked it up. ‘They talk of the
‘strike, he said. ‘What do you think?’ ‘Strike, I said.
‘Go out with the men.’ I read the demands. They were
good demands.”

“Do most of the women read the demands?” I asked.

She said: “When your man goes out on strike you wish
to know what for. When your man goes out and is not
earning money any more you would be a fool if you didn’t
wish to know what gain there is in it for him and yourself.
Well, we talked it up. Yanski said, ‘When have I had a
rest? Never. We will have a good time this strike.’ So
- we did. He painted everything. He made the cradle; he
made that beautiful chest of drawers from old packing
boxes. He stained and polished it. And when the baby
was born, what a help! For Yanski is handy in the house
—not like some men.”

Yanski came in, a comical looking fellow, with high
cheek bones and small beady eyes. From the way he and
his wife talked I knew that they enjoyed life together.

132 Men and Steel

The atmosphere of holiday was still around them. Yanski —
had painted the door and made the cradle and made the — a
chest of drawers, and had had‘fun for once. There was
in that home life, young energy, wholesome enjoyment. —
It made you feel as good to be with Yanski and his wife —
as being with happy children.

We asked a question which Father Kazinci often puts.

“Do you ever think of going into the country to live?”

“We're saving to go,’ Yanski said. ‘We want to live
where there are green fields.”

Old Country Children

Next door to Yanski lived a handsome woman who had
the high vitality that makes the Anglo-Saxon, in compari-
son, seem meager. She was spending her passion on the
desire to go back home. She had four boys. They were
dark-skinned and blue-eyed and wide-faced. They rushed
in and out as if the store of energy pent within them was
so great that they could rush through a lifetime like that —
without even being tired.

“These are my Old Country boys,” she told me, “all
born over there, all born in my home.” iS

There seemed to be some special virtue to these boys
in her eyes as though through them she had brought part
of her home with her.

“You want to go back?” I asked her.

“Want to go back!’ she echoed. “I would rather die
on a dunghill there than in a palace here.” —

Anonymous Peobdle 133

I did not get to the bottom of her fury. It went so deep
in her that she spoke with disparagement of the three chil-
dren born here. She openly and passionately preferred
her “Old Country boys.” In answer to my question as to
why she so preferred the Old Country, she flung at me:

“There, there is life!” She threw her arms out in a
wide gesture.

The year before I had seen the people of Hungary

stream out in the holiday of Fingsten—the holiday of sum-
mer, which dates from some pagan festival. Even under
the pressure of war, the spirit of life there had remained
opulent. A pleasure-loving spirit was abroad. All of
youth had streamed out of the villages to greet summer.
The young women looked like magnificent full grown
flowers, the older women like ripe fruit, for they age in a
mellow, generous fashion. I took it that this woman lashed
our country with the fury of her scorn because her eyes
rested on smoke and ugliness, and there was no holiday .
of summer. She was a woman who looked as though she
should have lived in a peony garden; instead she lived in
_a Braddock courtyard, where it seemed to be uncertain
whether the garbage would be removed this year or next.
Yet her indignant fury must have had a deeper reason.

Now she was using this fury in going on strike with
her husband. He was a handsome, easy going fellow.
You felt she did his anger for him.

134 Men and Steel
The Contented Woman

In the midst of this discontent I came across unques-
tioning women, who had brought with them from their
Jands a deeper acceptance of life than any we know. They ©
were the product of calmer days and of horizons not bound
by friezes of mill chimneys. I have never seen any one
so secure as one of them seemed. Peace lived in her house.
Her husband was sleeping on a wide davenport, her little
girl was sitting opposite her playing quietly, the kettle
hummed, the stove shone. She had the full array of the
small adornments of life which the women have when they
can—clean curtains, holy pictures making crimson splashes
on the wall, a shelf dressed in a linen towel with a deep
border of crocheted lace, on which stood a crucifix flanked
by two candles.

She was a plump, comely woman, dressed in a house
gown of lavender with a wide apron and a frilled cap on
her head. Her husband worked at night, and then he
came home and. had his breakfast, and she could watch
him all day while he slept. Her life was uncomplicated.
She had only one child, and she was content with a deep
inner contentment. It shone from her like a light. It
made one happy to see it. One finds many women here
who have peace in their eyes. |

Why have they such steadfast tranquillity? It may be
because the doors of life and death are forever open upon
them. They do not question either. We ignore birth and
refuse to admit the thought of death, so we limit life.

Anonymous People 135

These two great doors swing forever within their sight.
Their men work in a perilous occupation, and they them-
selves go through life, an endless procession of children
being born to them. Here and there you meet a woman
submerged in the struggle. For the most part the women
I saw in the steel towns are adequate. They face life
with tranquil assurance. 5

But they do not like it here. Nor have they become
assimilated. They do not learn the language, they do not
mingle with Americans, and they seem to keep their village
feeling and their village customs, as far as they can, like
some sacred guarded flame.

Rosie’s Measles

Whenever Father Kazinci and I plunged into the welter
of life of the First Ward, children ran to him. They all
loved him. One day as we visited from house to house a
little girl followed us. We would find her still waiting for
us as we came out of houses. At last she came up with
desperate boldness. Her eyes on the grimy snow, she
whispered something. Father Kazinci bent over.

“I can’t hear you, my child. Speak louder.”

With dazzling courage she managed to speak aloud.
“Will you visit my Mama?” she said. She had followed
us for blocks to be able to get out these words. It was
a splendid moral victory. We lost no time in going.

A young looking woman was waiting in the door.

“My Rosie, can you beat her? When she sees you,

136 | Men and Steel

Father, ‘I shall get him,’ she says. Out she goes like a t
bird flying. I call to her. ‘Rosie, come back! You don’t
dare, Rosie!’ ”

The woman shook with laughter ‘until I felt that her
house was: a warm-hearted place. I knew people have a
good time when they gather around the table of Rosie's
young mother.

She made jokes about everything, this woman. She —
joked about herself and what she said to her husband —
when she went to get him out of the saloon in the times
before prohibition. Then she made a grim joke that I
have heard more than once. When Father Kazinci asked
her: “Are all your children living?”

“Indeed yes, Father. I have no luck. Every one of
them alive. You see this child,” she said, “this is my Rosie.
She has the will of a mule. You can lay her over your
knee and spank her three times a day and she does what
she wishes. What does she do when she has the measles?
When my back is turned she gets up and goes to school,
because a child who never has been absent from school
will get a silver bell. She wants to be never absent from
school. With measles all over her and red as a beet, she
gets up and goes. And what does she do the rest of the
time? She sits up in bed watching her measles fade, with
the little glass that her father shaves by her so that she
may go back to school.”

There is magic in the Slavic character which had made
life cheerful even in the face of steel mill and smoke
barrier. The rubbish of a month was rotting unchecked

Anonymous People 137

outside, but Rosie’s house inside was shining with color and
cleanliness. It was a home as sound as good bread.

Two of the older children came in. They bowed to
Father Kazinci politely. It was like the old-fashioned
“making manners.” ‘Then, without being told, they hung
up their coats and hats. This was a sight in the steel
workers’ families which fascinated me. This woman con-
fided to me the secret of the children’s astounding good-
_ ness. ;

She threw her hands up. “Ma’am,” she said, “if our
kids be bad we all go crazy together. In two three rooms
children’s got to be good!”

138 Men and Steel
How They Came Here

The strike is based on the thousands of people like these
in Braddock. They came to this country seeking a wider
opportunity. They came to this country to seek freedom.
Hope brought them here.

As the pioneer spirit of America slackened and grew
fat on possessions and prosperity they replenished it with
their adventurous blood. Their men are strong. Their
women have the tranquil eyes of those accustomed to look-
ing over wide fields. Their faces are still brown with
wind and sun. They brought with them a bright treasure
of hope and it is buried under the garbage of the streets. —

This young army came here and spilled its youth and
its strength over the streets of Youngstown, Homestead
and Braddock. They came here flying the bright banners
of courage and freedom.

As one goes about among the women, the two things
that it hurts most to hear them talk about are their memo-
ries and their hopes. |

This strike was concerned with these dreams and these
hopes. In the last analysis a home is what any strike is
about. This strike concerned the right of organization,
hours and conditions. Follow these things to their source
and they will lead you back to a home and a woman sitting
in it with a child in her arms. This fight for organization
and hours will take you back from the sinister splendor of
the mills to a kitchen where children are getting ready
to go to school.

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CHAPTER XV

THE BREAK
The Mills Are Pried Open

NTIL the second week in November there was
scarcely a break in the strike. Then disquieting
rumors began to fly in to the central office in Pitts-
burg. Marshal law in Gary had been a mighty strike-
breaker. The soldiers and the bosses had acted together,
intimidating the workers. Here and there a mill idle for
five weeks would be pried open. Each mill that was pried

_ open stabbed the courage of the workers. The cowards

went from their own towns, where they were ashamed to
scab, and scabbed in distant towns. In this way the towns
exchanged their men without courage. The indifference
of many of the Internationals played its part. Many of

_ the craft unions involved in the manufacture of steel had

not been anxious to see steel organized. Many craft
unions have never cared to organize unskilled labor.

Now happened an amazing thing. The Amalgamated
Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers had survived
in the steel towns in independent plants. In these towns
it still had contracts. Its membership had been increased
to 100,000 by the strike situation and the National Com-

14]

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142 Men and Steel ae

mittee. The officials of the Amalgamated had never organ-
ized steel. They had not believed steel could be organized.

They had profited through the organization of steel. Now —

in the fifth week of the strike they declared that they must
keep their contracts. They protested against mills being
picketed in which they had contracts. They wanted their
skilled men to go back to work and keep these contracts.
They wanted the laborers who had been added to their
ranks in so many thousands to return with the skilled men.
It was a blow at the morale of the strike. There was a

stormy meeting of the National Committee in Pittsburg.

Organizers of Youngstown and Steubenville and other
places where there were contracts protested violently.
They protested in vain. The contract with the employer
was more important to the officials of this union than the
welfare of the strike.

After the strike was over the Amalgamated, with its new
members and its swollen treasury, withdraw from the
National Committee. Its organization refused to have any-
thing further to do with the Committee which had suc-
ceeded in organizing 250,000 steel workers. At the A. F.
of L. Convention in Montreal all efforts to urge it to come
in again were fruitless. The Amalgamated, whose union
comprised more steel workers than any of the other
twenty-four Internationals involved in the strike, broke
up the old National Committee as in the early days of
November it helped to undermine the strike.

The Break 143
Youngstown Office

After six weeks a red flare startled Youngstown’s skies.
The Ohio works opened up. They had been pried open,
people said, by negro strike-breakers. Negroes had been
brought into Youngstown in sealed box cars by night.
‘Rumor flew through the town. Everything was going to
open. Every one was going back to work and the strike
would be lost. The Americans were trickling back. All
the papers were saying the mills would be open wide. All
the strikers read the papers. Every one had been told
‘by boss or by tradesman that he alone would be staying
out. Every blast of the furnace cried to the workers,
“Come back and work; the strike is over.”

All Sunday the strikers were poised fearfully as though
upon the brink of disaster. All day one had the sensation
of being on a jam of logs that was about to break. Panic
and fear and doubt might do its work among the men.

Youngstown Office buzzed with the news of the action of
the Amalgamated. In many places near Youngstown
plants would be affected. Into a silence a big Irishman
threw with slow bitterness:

“I wonder how much they got from the steel companies
for keeping those contracts.”

Men came into Strike Headquarters, a steady trickle of
them. They wanted to see McCadden, they wanted to see
Hammersmark. They wanted to talk with some one. You
had the sense of their coming, as they had so often, for
ymoral support. They wanted reassurance; they wanted

144 Men and Steel

denials that the strike would be called off. Under their
doubt was stubborn patience. They came to seek courage.
It gave one courage to see them; they were not men to be

—-
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stampeded. They had fought so long. Yet no one knew —

what would happen. No one could be sure that a mighty

stream of men would not pour back in the mills. The
scene was set for it. The setting of the stage was the

blast works. The opening had been announced by papers -

and by the bosses.
Picket Line

I went out to see the disaster. It was not yet five in the
morning, and black as midnight except where the fiery
salvos of the blast furnace of the Ohio Works shattered
the night with glory. I was alone in my ride in the street
car except for two uneasy scabs. I didn’t look at them;
I didn’t like to. The right of the individual workman to
work when and how he liked seemed as tenable as the
right of the individual citizen to desert to the enemy in

wartime. I got out of the car. A man detached himself

from the darkness.

“Ma’am, I come to meet you,” he greeted me.

In silence we went toward the works.

All the thought of the strikers is focussed on the picket
line. There goes on daily a terrible and silent contest of
wills. . }

We walked through the darkened streets. A group of
policemen were on a corner. We exchanged “Good morn-
ings” as we passed by. Here in Ohio peaceful picketing

The Break 145

_was legal. The police knew the organizers. Some of the

_ deputies were even sympathetic to the strikers. Up the

side streets stood dark groups of men. I knew that on the
streets leading down hill toward the works more men
were posted. They were there to guard the strike. They

_ had been there night after night to see that no betrayer
_ slipped through to work.

A man with tools came hurrying along.
“Were you going, boy?” my guide challenged.
“Going to work up to Youngstown—I ain’t scabbin’;

_ you didn’t think I was.” He was young and eager. He

; only a sorrowful and accusing gravity.

_ couldn’t bear the implications that he was a deserter.

Another man scuttled through the dark, head down, tool
box held tight.

“Were you going, boy?” the challenge came again.

_ There was no menace in his deep voice, no note of bullying;

ce

Why you going
to work, boy? Don’ you know we’re on strike?” The

_ man hurried without stopping down the street whose dark-
ness was now violently torn asunder by the sudden splendid

fury of the blast. The buildings, the high chimneys and

walls and bridges, the houses and the knots of men were

etched black against the magnificent violence of flame.
The picket line thickened. The men moved up and down
sluggishly, enough to conform with the law, which advises
pickets to keep moving. A patrol wagon came past.
Policemen got out of it near the gate of the mills. Three
big wagons thundered over the bridge leading to the mill
gate—-provisions for the scabs.

146 Men and Steel

A trickle of men began coming over out of the mill.

They crossed another group coming in. From the point
of view of the quiet, watching men those were traitors,

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deserters, men of the spawn of Judas. The pickets were

quiet and watchful. No one spoke. Their scarcely moving

line gave the impression of a slow drifting stream. The

men coming and going from work walked swiftly, head

down, shouiders hunched, hurrying to get out of sight of

the watchful line with its terrible and accusing quiet.

Day came creeping on us; we could see each other’s
faces. A light primrose stained the sky which seemed far
off and remote. When dawn touched the men they looked
cold and tired; they looked anxious and worn. The whistle
gave tongue. More men hurried out of the mill, more men
scuttled in. The patrol wagon came up; the police hopped
in. It was seven o'clock; the morning vigil was over.
The strike was unbroken. The deluge had not occurred.
The men weary with watching, weary with inaction and
with suspense, drifted to their homes.

f

Steel Workers’ Children

“You’re cold, ma’am,” my guide said. “I want you
should come to my house to get breakfast; my house ain't
far
He would not let me go. He couldn’t see me get on a

car without a cup of coffee. We walked past little de-
tached dwellings, small frame houses, some few of con-

crete. Here and there a crimson rambler was planted

The Break 147

over a door; there were porches, and plots of ground sur-
rounded the houses. ‘This was Steelton, the most decent
steel community that I had seen.

A big boy met us at the gate on his way to school. In-
side the kitchen stood rows and rows of polished shoes
ready to put on. Brightly polished shoes standing neatly
two by two. Any parent will understand what this means.
Few families can get boys to black their shoes the night
before.

The striker’s wife greeted me like an old friend. Had
they gone back, she wanted to know? It wasn’t true—
thank God! Were there more scabs than yesterday?
Above all, had any of their own people gone back? Was
there treason in the house?

The children came in. They went to the sink to finish
their washing. An older girl, a blonde child with a wide
placid face, turned the skeptical and disillusioned eye of
an elder sister upon the backs of the boys’ necks. They
went into the next room and got clean patched shirts. My
hostess fried eggs for Mike and myself and poured us
coffee. They talked. The children ate. I have never
seen such well-behaved children. They did not interrupt
the conversation. No one cried out, ‘““Ma, where’s this—
Ma, I can’t find that.” They dressed and ate their break-

fast and went to school, and before they went they said
? good-by and shook hands with me.

Mike had been here for twenty years. After twenty
- years of work underground in the mines and in the heat of
_ the steel mills, after twenty years of unremitting industry,

148 Men and Steel

he had bought a four-room house. It had a grape arbor ;
and a little garden. He has eight children. That is —

_ what the conditions of labor in this country had permitted
him to achieve. He is incomparably better off than the
average steel worker.

Why Men Sirike

The baby came and laid her head against Mike’s knee,

and Tisa, who is still nearly a baby, climbed up and put

her arms around his neck; he enclosed them in a great

arm.

“They only get to know their papa now, since the strike.
When father works fourteen hours night and ten light, he
never sees the children.” He nodded.

“You see that’s why I struck. How do you think the
strike go? You think we goin’ to win now—pretty soon?”

His wife broke in: “If this strike ain’t won, we're goin’
to win another strike. Our people ain’t never goin’ to stop
until our fathers can be home sometimes and not be just
like a horse—take out of the stall and put back in the
stall.”

“You see, twelve hours—that’s too long for a man to
work. A man can’t work so long and be anything but
_ tired out like a beast. I used to be a miner when first I
worked in this country—we worked thirteen hours. We
struck. We don’t win. We go to jail because we picket.

We get sent to jail for all kinds of reasons. But now —

the miners, they only work eight hours.
“You see those boys of mine; I got four. By and by

The Break 149

they goin’ to grow up, maybe they goin’ to go and work in
the mills like me. I want my boy should get a chance to
read more than me. [I want those boys to have a chance to
learn more than I have a chance. I want they shouldn’t
have to work fourteen hours night and ten hours light. I
want when they’re old enough to get married that they
see their babies sometimes when they’re little. We all feel
like that, but when we see how so many Americans went
back so soon as the mill is opened, we Slovaks feel like we
was out skating and that we skate out far and the ice cracks
and we look around and only us, everybody else goes
ashore—but we got to win just the same, sometime!” ’

“Of course we got to win,’ his wife said. “What you
been through before we can go through again and we can’t
go through anything so bad as we've been through! When
my oldest girl was a baby and before my big boy you saw
going to school was born, father was on strike in the mines.
Those days they was worse to strikers than they are now.

“You think they do everything to strikers now. They
do even worse then, in those days! So father got thirteen
months for picketing. We had got all our furniture paid
for except fourteen dollars. After they took father away
I couldn’t pay any more. They took away everything from
my house. They took my bed from my baby. They took
my cook stove. They didn’t leave me nothing.

“TI sat down on the floor of my empty house with my
baby in my arms and thought about my new baby that was
going to come, and I thought, ‘No matter, I’m a strong
young woman’; I thought, ‘Never mind what they do to me,

150 Men and Steel

I’ll take care of both my babies until father gets out!’
I sat like that on the bare floor of my house and thought ~

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to comfort myself that father was right to strike like he ©

did and that I was going to fight shoulder to shoulder right

alongside of him. I know we got to win, because it’s right *

we should win.”
Fighting Women
Next day I went to the women’s meeting in the base-

ment of the Slovak church in Steelton. It was not far
from the Ohio works, near the house where I had had

breakfast. There were perhaps seventy women. Some

carried babies. They came from the new houses.

The woman who had given me breakfast was there; I
recognized women I had seen before. I had gone with her
to the houses of many women, while she told them of the
meeting. How clean their houses were; how they rejoiced
in their new-found comforts. How happy they were living
in houses that had little yards where their children could
play.

They talked with me about the strike. They asked prac-
tical questions; they gave practical answers to questions.
What they hated was the twelve-hour day. They under-
stood less about the right of collective bargaining, though
some were clear-minded about it. They wanted their hus-
bands to work as men in other industries worked. They
wanted leisure for their husbands. They wanted their
boys to work under better conditions.

They assembled in the basement of the church—fine

The Break 151

- looking women, young wives and old mothers, middle-aged
mothers of families. Most of them wore on their heads
the frilled mob caps which the women in steel towns wear
to keep the slack from their hair.

They did not sit quiet the way the men did at meetings;

they talked back to the organizer. He sweated under their
questions. They wanted to know the exact status of the
strike; they wanted to know their chances of winning.
They wanted to know if they got out on the picket line
if it would help. Then he talked to them earnestly in
their own language, and they listened, swayed by his ora-
tory, sunk in his account of the battle. He held them in |
his hand. You could see indignation mounting in their
eyes, the old women nodding their heads in affirmation of
what he said. He was telling them the age-old story of
the people’s fight. He was relating it with the strike.
- He eased himself into a lighter tone. He made a joke.
Laughter greeted him. They rocked with good earthly
laughter. They were not afraid of life, they were not
afraid of a fight, nor of a homely joke. They could love
and fight and laugh. It was comforting to look in their
eyes. It was terrible to think that all their sacrifices and
all their courage might be in vain.

CHAPTER XVI

WHITE TERROR
Johnstown Mob

FTER the strike had lasted some weeks, people

A said openly in the towns that the strike could not

be broken peacefully. Members of the Chamber

of Commerce said it, leading citizens. They formed vigi-

lance committees. The Steel Company officials helped
them.

James Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania State
Federation of Labor was threatened by a mob of dubious
origin. It was said that money was spent by Chambers
of Commerce in their effort to terrorize him. Boys formed
the mob and hoodlums. Maurer was dangerous. Maurer
had said if he had the power he would stop every wheel
in the state if the steel workers’ rights and liberties were
not returned to them, so terror whined at his heels.

In many towns these terroristic groups, under the name
of citizens’ committees, were organizing to stampede the
strikers, to drive out organizers. This was done in towns
where the strike had been peaceful, where there had been
no conflicts with the police.

Johnstown was such a town. The first week in Novem-

152

White Terror 153

ber Foster went there to speak. At that station they
warned him it would be dangerous. He went on. Conboy
and Foster were walking up the street; they were going
up to the hall. A mob of men bore down on them; they
were surrounded and separated. They took Foster to the
train, a gun in his ribs. There was no police protection for
Foster. The state constabulary were quiet. When mobs
are made up of leading citizens, mobs are unmolested.
They put Foster on the train.

That night the mob surrounded the strikers’ hall. They
drove the organizers out of town. They pried open the
mills. The scene was set for the mills to open. It was
more spectacular than the Youngstown opening. It was
advertised through the papers. Of the 18,000 men on
strike only 800 went back. But the opening had been
made. Smoke rolled up to the sky. In these mills where
no smoke had been, the fire of the blast took their heart
from the men. The sense of disaster deepened in all the
towns. The small striking communities were steeped in
doubt; the bosses went around to the women undermining
their courage, threatening that if their men did not go back
there would never be any work for them. In isolated
places every power the company knew was brought to bear
on the strikers to make them believe that they alone were
hanging on, to make them believe the strike was over every-
where else, and that people were enly striking in this town.

154 Men and Steel

Youngstown Arrests

‘Every day brought the news of fresh arrests. When
an organizer was missing for a few hours foul play
was feared. A sense of anxiety oppressed every one.
Every one was restless. A sinister menace poisoned the
steel towns. It came from the spies, from professional
strike-breakers. It had in it the whining of the mob spirit.
The steel companies had massed their forces against the
SEPMECTS OO '

Conboy and Karowsky were railroaded out of Johnstown.
Geoletti stayed to brave the mob. They could not make
him go. Liley, of Butler, was arrested. Meetings were no
longer allowed in Youngstown. Youngstown looked hun-
grily at Johnstown’s vigilance committees. The men were
not going back to work fast enough. Citizens’ committees
were formed in Youngstown too. Strike meetings were for-
bidden. ‘“Black-hand” letters poured into the organizer’s
office. McCadden was arrested on the charge of “criminal |
syndicalism.” The charge was not pressed, for, as some
one said, you could as soon get McCadden on a charge of
syndicalism as you could get Samuel Gompers on a charge
of reading the I. W. W. Preamble for morning prayers.

I went over to Youngstown again. I had seen Youngs-
town triumphant, the laughter of victory on the men’s
faces. I had seen them stiffen up on the brink of disaster.
Now courage was oozing from the men, and as courage
oozed from the men hope went from the organizers. There
was a different atmosphere now. They began to believe

White Terror 155

that they were going to lose. They had suffered in vain.
Suspense and doubt had their way with them.

It was hard in those days to talk to the men and meet
their questions. More and more the Slavs felt that they
were deserted on a piece of ice that had broken off and
that a dark widening piece of water separated them from
the land.

I went down to the picket line, this time in East Youngs-
town. The car was packed with scabs, many of them
negroes. The police were out. Another woman reporter
was with me. The police eyed us with suspicion. Accord-
ing to the law, we kept moving. We walked up and down
slowly. ‘There were fewer pickets. There were more men
going to work. The strike was not over; but it was waning.
The courage of some of the men was such that they might
yet be out if the strike had not been called off.

The police watched us narrowly. Formerly. they had
appeared neutral to the strikers; now they were hostile.
Presently I saw the chief of police speak to the woman
with me. She came over to me. What he had said was:

“Stop interfering with these men going to work or I'll
run you in mighty damn quick.”

It was enough to be a woman and stand on the picket line
in those days to have to run the gauntlet of police intimida-
tion. In East Youngstown feeling had run high; women
had come out on the picket line, women had thrown pepper.
I explained that we were not pickets, but reporters.

“Like hell you are,” said the chief. “I know reporters
when I see them; I know who you are.”

156 Men and Steel
The Scab

One of the organizers offered us a ride back to the office.
It was early. The office was full of men. Some men were
leaning back in chairs against the wall; some men were in
front of the bulletin board. Men came in and went out.
Every one was torn between hope and fear. It had not
been as bad as they expected. It was bad enough. We
stood around aimlessly. I made talk with Olchen, the
Slovak organizer.

“How are the meetings?”

“Good enough,” he answered. ‘‘The men come. You
remember the first time you are here?”

I remember the shock of their laughter. Olchen looked
around; he stood there anxious. Suspicion was in the air.
Each man searched every man’s eye. Every man asked
every other man mutely:

“Are you going back? Are you going to hang on?” |

Olchen spoke again. ‘You remember how it was; how
they laughed, how they stamped in the hall, hardly there
was room for them. Now they come quiet, now they come

93

asking ...’’ His voice trailed off.

I looked around at their faces. Now they came like
empty vessels, drained of their courage, asking mutely to
be filled with that first heady wine.

Out in the hall there was a noise. It was the noise of a
man sobbing. Talk stopped in the office. It was deathly
quiet. Men drifted to the door to look out. A big Polish

steel worker was sobbing with his face against the wall.

White Terror 157

Nobody spoke; every one was quiet. His disaster had
overtaken all of us. The organizer who had been talking
with him turned to us.

“He’s been scabbing. He thought everybody’d gone
back. They told him everybody’d gone back. He found
out it wasn’t so; he found he was sold out. He can’t stand
it, he’s been scabbing.” ‘Two or three of the men gathered
around him trying to comfort him. It was as though we
heard the voice of the strike crying in that hall. We turned
away. Talk was resumed again. A man said:

“To win they’ve got to make a coward of a fellow.”

Another answered: “That’s what the steel companies
make when they make steel nowadays. They’re making
cowards and they’re making traitors.”

Thanksgiving at Donora

On Thanksgiving Day I went to Donora to have dinner
with the strikers. The road that takes you there is called
the scenic railway. It goes through a country as romantic
as the Berkshire Hills. There are abrupt hills and swift
streams, dense woods. This sweet country has here and
there a blot. Little, black sordid towns. Towns made of
shacks. Towns without self-respect.

Donora is a long, thin, meager town. It is desolate and
abandoned, an aggregation of mean streets and mean
houses.

Groups of men were standing about the corners idle.

158 ae Men and Steel

I asked the first man I met where the strike headquarters

was. He directed me to the Lithuanian Hall. Both strike

. headquarters and the commissary were in this hall. The

never-failing group of men were around the bulletin board

reading the latest strike news. |
“Where’s Hodge?” I asked. |

“Two plainclothes men came and got him—we’re afraid

they are going to arrest him just to spoil our dinner.” One

of the men took me down the stairs.
“I tell you I had a pretty hard time to keep the boys
quiet after they took Hodge away,” he told me. The smell

of turkey was in the air; long tables were set out. The

men were eating their dinner or lining up. for it—the dinner

was five cents a plate to those who could afford it. The

place was full of good fellowship. But there was some-
thing else in the air—an uneasiness—as if everybody was
waiting for something to happen—a lurking sense of dis-
aster. |

I went up to the office of the Constabulary. State
troopers were lolling around in chairs, out of uniform.
The burgess was in his office. I talked with him.

“You have had no trouble here?’ I asked. “The strikers
have been quiet?” |

“The strikers have been quiet enough,” he agreed. “Our
people are all right; it’s these agitators.” He shot a
poisonous glance at Hodge who had come down the stairs
and stood in the hall talking with the Chief of Police.

The burgess was a soft looking little man. He had a
red face, a receding chin and watery eyes.

is Fin
on ec la
See ee a

White Terror 159

“Outside agitators was what made the trouble.” He was
sure of that. The people were all right until they came.
The men who walked out of the mills had always been
happy and satisfied. They walked out just to make a liv-
‘ing for these agitators. Organizers are professional-
trouble makers who make a living stirring up contented
people.

He talked on querulously in this fashion. It was his
mental bankruptcy that offended me. The officials talked
like this in all the steel towns. Organizers alone had made
the trouble. The obvious answer is, ‘Lynch the organizers.
If you can’t lynch them, deport them, arrest them—and
the ignorant foreigners will be good again.”

Things were stewing and boiling in Donora. The super-
intendent of the mills spoke from his automobile urging
the workers to come back. No one stopped him. Had a
strike sympathizer spoken to the men, urging them to stay
out, he would have been arrested, he would have been
“inciting to riot.”

“Mind you, no speaking,” the Chief of Police threw after
Hodge as we walked away.

“I get you,’ Hodge said good-temperedly. We returned
to strike headquarters. When Hodge came the uneasiness
lifted only a little. He told them that he had been sent
for to promise that there would be no speeches afier the
Thanksgiving dinner. You felt that the men were appre-
hensive and uneasy. There were citizens’ committees in
Donora. There was no telling when the mob spirit would
unloose itself. The strikers knew it.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DYING STRIKE
The Funeral

OR a time the riding down of people appeared to
have ended. There were no more wholesale arrests.
But the Constabulary stayed in the towns and
though they were comparatively quiet, we heard from them
from time to time. One day in strike headquarters in
the Monongahela House, word came that the Constabulary
had broken up a funeral in Braddock.
There had never been such a funeral. There was no end

to it. First there were many carriages and afterwards an ~

interminable procession of black clothed men under um-
brellas. It was a cold day. Rain fell in a drizzle. It

froze as it fell. No one knew the dead man’s name. There.

seemed to be no reason for the breaking up of the funeral.

During the afternoon men came dripping into the office.
Huge silent men. They had not much to say. Yes, the
mounted police broke up the funeral. The men had run.
“They said there were too many of us,” was their explana-
tion. This funeral had become a procession, a demonstra-
tion, and such things were not allowed in Braddock.

The mourners did not seem surprised to have the funeral

160

shi ala | si a

The Dying Strike 161

broken up. The “Cossacks,” as they knew them, were
there to prevent, inhibit, invade other assemblages as harm-
less as funerals. Life is violent here. Men were killed
in Braddock in 1916. Homestead and its memories of the
great strike of 1892 are across the river.

From the sparse trickle of talk I got the impression of a
very large funeral—a funeral as long as Main Street.
During the afternoon the funeral took form in my mind; it
became as something I myself had seen. A heavy picture,
black on black, black with a massive background of smoke.
Smoke uncoiling itself to the clouded sky, smoke of such
density as to seem solid. This smoke was the background
of a hurly burly of men in heavy shoes, slipping and sliding
on icy pavements.

I saw it as if I had been there, the piles of dirty snow,
the oily smoke writhing upwards to the slate colored sky.
The wind wrenching umbrellas from hands. Black and
white streets shining with rain.

There was no clew among all these taciturn mourners as
to why they had come in such numbers. But they had
come from Monessen and Donora and Duquesne as easily
as from South Pittsburg. It seemed that every Slav and
Pole and Roumanian came to the funeral. They came
from Rankin stewing over the smoke of the mills, and from
3 Charleroi. Men had come who did not belong to the dead
man’s church or his society. -

The room began to smell of wet leather, of black dye, of
men. There was a clash of gutteral talk from a group in
a corner. A big fellow shook his fist upward in a slow

162 Men and Steel

menacing gesture. There was something solemn in this

shaken fist, the symbol of revolt.

It was part of some story. A crash of laughter fol-

lowed—disquieting laughter. Laughter more menacing
than anger.

The Federal Raids

In the last dreary stretches of the strike came the raids

of the Department of Justice. Workers suddenly disap-
peared from their homes. Fathers of families disappeared.
Some were steel workers and some were not. In the minds
of the steel strikers the raids were part of the program
of violence.

The local government had been against them—the bur-
gesses and sheriffs and police.

The State had been against them. The State Govern-
ment was the friend of the steel masters, not of the steel
workers.

Now they felt that the United States Government was
against them too. It was the logical sequence in the work-
ers’ minds.

The spies of the United States Steel Corporation passed
on tips to the Department of Justice. The Department
of Justice acted on accusations given by illiterate under-
cover men. So in each town some workers were spirited
away. No one heard of them. Their families knew noth-
ing of their whereabouts. Some of them were deported.
But after having been held for months in prison, others
returned. No charges could be preferred against them.

The Dying Strike 163

Long after the strike was over I heard the workers talk-
ing about these raids. In the unexplained disappearance of
inoffensive neighbors there was an element of terror that
had captured their imagination. A striker in East Youngs-
town talked to me about it.

“Is it free country when they take feller out of his house
at night and take him away? On my street live feller.
They come in middle of night; they smash his trunk with
ax; they look for gun; he ain’t got none; they throw his
things around; they take him off with them. Where is he?
No one can know. His wife she cry and cry. They got
five children. My wife take her in something to eat. My
wife try to comfort her, but she cry and cry, ‘Where is my
man? How I going to live?’

“The priest say to me:

““John, did police have warrant when they came to his
house?’

“Don’t need warrant to search Hunkie’s house. Maybe
another time they come and take me away. So now I go
to steamship company. Pretty soon I get back home again.

“When I come to this country first time I am going right
off to be citizen, I think. Pretty soon this is my country,
I think. Pretty soon I buy me house. You know what the
first English is I learn? ‘Damn Hunkie’—that’s what I
learn. That’s what they call me. But when war come,
Hunky good enough to fight.

“You hear what feller say is difference between govern-
ment in Austria and government here. He say, there Kaiser
rule; here mill boss rule. That’s true. We gotta do what

164 Men and Steel

mill boss say. If we join union boss call us ‘damn Hunkie’
and kick us out. Is that free country? So now I go home

_to my country, Bohemia. My country more free country

than this.”

There are thousands of competent workmen in his state
of mind. They do not believe in American democracy.
Why should they? ‘They have never seen any in the steel
towns. —

These raids at the last end of the strike were the final
proof to the foreigners that every element of government
was against them. They did not understand it. Why had
the government done this? The foreign workers do not
distinguish sharply between Socialists and Communists.
Most steel workers come from countries where the Socialist
Party has a powerful representation in their parliament.
In their minds the raids were another evidence that gov-
ernment is used to oppress workers.

National Committee Office

Through a fine sifting rain that froze when it reached
the pavement and the grime-covered piles of half-melted
snow, I went over to Homestead with an organizer who
carried bulletins. It was during the last days of the strike.

_ The office was filled so full with men that you could not
move. They seemed to be waiting for something; they had
an anxious air.

There were an organizer’s desk, a bench, a chair or two,

The Dying Strike 165

but there were no chairs for the men to sit on. I asked
why.

“They'd raid us if we had chairs. They’d call it holding
a meeting,” the organizer answered. There was not even
a bulletin board. The Constabulary would not let them
ehalk up their news. They had four walls; they had
- nothing else.

The room was always filled with men, men milling
around, men waiting for something; a restless atmosphevre.
I have seen crowds like this in steamship offices—people
waiting for news of missing vessels. I have seen people
like this in France before the time of the Communiqué,
people waiting for news of battle.

People fearing news of disaster but hoping for good
news wait as these men waited.

They milled around; they shifted from one place to
another. A few drifted out. More crowded in. They did
not talk much, but there was a low hum in the air, a vibra-
tion that was disquieting. The room was filled with sus-
pense. One giant of a man with a blonde mustache like a
lambrequin talked earnestly with a fellow squat as a dwarf.
The squat man’s chest was like a cask, his hairy arms hung
to his knees. He felt me looking at him. He made his
way to me through the crowd.

“Ma’am,” he said, “pretty soon we gotta win, ain’t we?
Pretty soon we gonna get what we want.” He spoke with
intensity, but there was no conviction in his voice. He was
pleading with me to reassure him. He was repeating to

me what all the men in the room were saying:

166 Men and Steel

“Now pretty soon we must win.” They all said it with-
out conviction. Shipwrecked men on a raft at sea must
talk in this tone as they look around the empty horizon.

I had no words to answer him. I had seen the book of
the United States Steel Corporation. I had seen a strike
broken on the Mesaba Range.

Three times a week these bulletins went to the strikers.
They were printed in seven languages. Not all the strikers
got this bulletin. It was the one slender link which they
had between them; it was the only thing which many had ~
to make them know that their fellow workers in other
towns stood by them.

Every one’s face was turned to the organizer. Every
one’s hand was outstretched for bulletins. Men went
through the steaming crowd with bundles of them. The
talk stopped. Men were reading. Talk began again.
Comments rapped out sharply in half a dozen languages.

Here in Homestead and Braddock the men stuck. In
the towns where the mills had always operated the strikers
stood firm. They looked failure in the face, but to the end
_ they filled the organizer’s office, in their desire for freedom.
They packed the room tight with revolt. They were men
ready to pay in terms of themselves for their beliefs.
What they believe was not formulted into a dogma. It
was not narrowed down to trade union bargaining. They
were dumb, inarticulate, but they were vibrating in tune to
the great urge that is lifting up the workers around the
world. They could lose the strike, but they could never
lose the consciousness of their combined strength.

The Dying Strike 167
The Dying Strike

The strike was dying. It was bleeding to death like a
living thing. Seep, seep, seep—courage oozed from the
men. Seep, seep, seep—they sagged back to work. Each
man gutted of his self-respect was a victory for the Steel
Companies. Strikes are broken by breaking men’s courage;
_ strikes are broken by making men play traitor to what they
believe.

The men knew this. Sullen, ashamed, they trickled back.
Want drove them, and fear, and the doubtful faces of their
women. There had not been enough of anything except
men—not enough money, not enough organizers, not
enough interest on the part of the Internationals involved
in the strike, not enough support from official labor.

Yet when the National Committee met in Washington
on December 12th, 109,000 men were still on strike. The
strike had not been stamped out. It had not been
smothered. But it had been overwhelmed by the great
forces against it; it was killed by the indifference of Insti-
tuted Labor. So it died, from a slow bleeding. The steel
workers’ sobbing in the dark hall outside the National
Committee Office in Youngstown will always be to me the
sound of the dying strike.

CHAPTER XVIII

STRIKE DERELICTS
Scrapped

HE strike was over. Many men got jobs. Few
got back their old ones. As much as possible the
strikers were degraded. The old men were often

not taken back.

I went with Father Kazinci to visit the homes of some
of those who were in trouble. We were looking for a man
called Shapiro. Where Shapiro lived we had to find out
from the Albanian butcher, who was on the same street
with the Albanian Coffee House. Among the welter of
races in Braddock there is a colony of these mysterious
people. We found Shapiro’s house on Halkett Street,
the street that skirts the tracks of the Baltimore & Ohio,
separated from the shining rails by an iron fence. Like
most steel workers in this part of Braddock, Shapiro lived
in two rooms. The trains screeched past him perpetually.
He had stepped out and one of the children was sent to
fetch him.

“What will we do, Father?” his wife asked. “They
won’t give him back his job.”

The room was like any ordinary steelworker’s room—

168

Strike Derelicts 169

a kitchen, a shelf on which was a crucifix and candles, a
lounge, holy pictures, curtains in the window. A room
that tried to spell home.

“What breaks his heart,’ the woman went on, “is our
Anna. She works in the glass works. She isn’t strong.
She’s supporting us both. Her hands are cut. If they
won't take him back, what can we do? She comes back
so tired, Father. It breaks her father’s heart.”’

Shapiro himself came in. He limped.

“Were you hurt in the mills?” Father Kazinci asked
him.

Shapiro bent over, rolled his pants up and his stocking
down. Jagged across his leg was the white scar of an
old wound.

“After that,” he said, “I was never strong again.”

“Did you get compensation?”

“No, Father.”

“Did you try to?”

He shook his head. “They said they would take care
of me.”

“And now they won't take you back again after the
strike ?”’

=p Fa

“Were you active in the strike?”

“No, Father.”

“Were you a union man?”

“Not before the strike. When I first came to this
country there was a strike in New York where I was

working. I did not strike. The men beat me up. This

170 Men and Steel

time when a strike comes, I said to TMi. “Better I

i

strike with the other men’.

He looked at us with innocent puzzled eyes. One could
see he had understood nothing. The industrial machine
of America had caught him up. First he had broken some

rule he did not understand and suffered for it. Now he

had broken a rule on the other side and suffered for it too.
“How many years have you worked in this country?”
“Over twenty years. They won’t take me back,’ he
repeated. “They said, ‘No work for you.’” He looked
at Father Kazinci as though he had asked him to unravel
the problem of his life. Why had he been beaten in the
first place; why had he been discharged in the second
place; why was life so hard? Who could tell him? He

had worked always, and now his little daughter must

work with bleeding hands.

Es eiidiet: Pasar

We walked down Halkett Street to another house. Here
an old man was waiting for us. This old couple was liv-
ing in one room. The bed had been moved down to the
kitchen, as the upper room had been rented to a lodger.
It was neat, but the room gave the impression of a place
filled with grief. The man, gray faced and gray of hair,
stood silent. The woman talked in her own tongue.

“Do you remember the funeral?’ Father Kazinci turned.

to me. “Do you remember the funeral they broke up?
It was this man’s son. He died of rage. Early in the

Strike Derelicts 171

strike he was beaten over the head by a trooper. One
day the troopers were riding up and he flew at them; he
attacked them with his bare hands. He tried to drag the
Cossack from his horse. Suddenly he fell back. People
around thought he had been shot, but he had had a stroke.
They brought him here. He died in this bed.”

Now I understood the big funeral. I understood those
silent, dripping men. They had come out to ‘pay tribute
to anger that had been greater than fear. This man had
done what so many of them had itched to do; he had at-
tacked the state troopers with his bare hands. He had
expressed the hate that was in the hearts of all of them.
He had risked his life to do it, and he had paid with
his life. So when he died Monessen and Donora and Char-
leroi and East Pitisburg had come out

Now his father could not get work again. He was sixty-
nine years old and had worked for thirty-five years in the
Edgar Thompson Works. The son had left a widow
with five children.

The old man’s ‘daughter, who lived near at hand, had
been left a widow also. She had a daughter who worked in
the Westinghouse, and a boy who worked by day in the
library and went to night school. There were four other
children. Fifteen people were living from the labor of
two young girls, and the money earned by young John
who worked in the library. The gray woman put this
question to Father Kazinci:

“What shall we do if our father is not given work
again?”

172 Men and Steel

He had no answer for her question. The other children
are too young to work. The mothers with little children
cannot go to work. At most they can take in some wash-
ing or pay their rent by taking lodgers. What is to be
done if the grandfather is not taken back? During the
strike they spent their savings. What is to be done?
He is sixty-nine years old and he has worked for thirty-
five years in one place. To the question: “Were you active
in the strike?” he had a negative. His son had been active.

The problem was an unsolvable problem. We saw before
our eyes two households disintegrated. We saw children
deprived of the chance to live. Women with children driven
to sending those children to institutions. What was to be
done if there was no work?

Life-Long Protest

We went into another house. A young woman sat wash-
ing her feet. There is no privacy in the First Ward.

Between the two windows was a photograph of the U.
S. S. Sigourney. This was a son’s ship. He had been a
volunteer. He had been discharged from the navy five
months. He didn’t get his old job back when he returned
to the steel mill; he was for some time out of work. Now
he was working again. So was Steve’s son-in-law. —

Old Steve alone had not been taken on again. The son-
in-law, and Mike, the sailor, also strikers, had been given
jobs. Not such good jobs, not their old jobs—but they
were working. Old Steve had been scrapped.

Strike Derelicts 173

Twenty-three years ago he had fallen and broken his
foot in the Edgar Thompson Works. He got no com-
pensation he said. He was as sound looking a man as a
winter apple, ruddy cheeked with innocent blue eyes. His
wife resembled him as it is said that husbands and wives
in their old age grow to resemble one another. His wife
and he had the back tenement and his married daughter
the front—good people, sound people. For twenty-five
years he had gone back and forth to the Edgar Thompson
Works. Almost in his first year he had had the accident.

There were nine now in his family, including a daughter
working for the Westinghouse Company. He was not a
citizen. He could not read and write. He could rear
sons to volunteer in our navy, and he and his wife could
bring up their daughters to be fine women.

Other men were worse off. There was no one dependent
on him. He had sons to look after him, but a man in his
late fifties cannot face inaction even though hunger does
not stare him in the face.

Sweeter old people I never saw, none who looked more
innocent or more defenseless than Steve and his wife. I
have never seen a house kept with such exquisite perfec-
tion as this little old woman kept her two rooms. Its clean
smell was like a perfume. The rugs on the floor were
handwoven. As in every other house, here was a shelf
covered with a deep-laced crocheted fringe on which stood
the crucifix backed by tall candles. These are the usual
possessions. But in this house order and spotlessness had
a deeper significance. It was as if this woman had spent

174 | Men and Steel

her life in a passionate protest against Braddock’s dirt
and Braddock’s ugliness. She had been too busy keeping
things clean, raising her children, to learn much English.

Old Strikers

Two old men who could not get their jobs called at the
rectory. They were magnificent looking men. Both had
shoulders as wide as doors. One was fifty-six. He had
worked with the Edgar Thompson people for thirty-two
years. The other was fifty-three. He had worked for
thirty-four years with the same firm. One had six children
and the other seven. Each one owned his own house. One
had a six-room house on which he had already paid his
whole life’s savings.

I asked one why he was not a citizen. He answered:

‘“Ma’am, I work for twenty years at night.”

The only time he saw his children was at breakfast.
He returned to sleep as their day began, and had worked
Sundays for twenty years. Now after thirty-two years he
also had been screpped. He had the only other explana-
tion that I heard beside that of age for failing to get his
job back when the younger men were returned. A near
neighbor of his was a spy in the pay of the company.
People knew the man was a “spotter.” When organiza-
tion was going on in the works, he had been an informer.
On a certain day this man got drunk. He flourished a
pistol around and swore at the strikers and said he would
who didn’t go back

shoot any

Strike Derelicts 175

to work. The old striker went to the police station. He
reported that there was a man behaving in a dangerous
and unseemly fashion. The company’s spotter was arrested
and fined.

That he believes is why he and his son are not rein-
stated. He had caused the arrest of a drunken spotter.

These men in their fifties look strong enough now to do
any kind of a day’s work. If the company kept them on,
later they would not work so well. After a lifetime of
work in this country, after raising children, contributing
sons to the army of this country, there was no more
work for him.

CHAPTER XIX

ALIENS
Boy Without a Country

S Father Kazinci and I walked through the Brad-
dock alleys we bent our heads to the thin rain
without speaking. I had been accompanying him

on a round of parochial visits, and we did not talk because
there seemed nothing adequate to say.

At last he spoke: “If you analyze what we have heard
to-day, it means something like ‘No advancement for the
Slavs.’ They cannot help giving them jobs, but they will
give them as poor ones as they can. I wonder if John
has his job.” He looked toward a boy coming toward us.

“He was my most brilliant pupil. When he had to leave
school, I wept. He comes from a remarkable family.
There are six boys. Each of them deserves a college educa-
tion. J have to face no more bitter thing than to see my
ambitious boys swallowed up by the mills. It’s hard with
all of them. But this boy could not be kept down. When
the strike came, he was on the road to advancement to
become assistant chemist.”

We were face to face with him now.

“How do you do, Father?”

176

Aliens 177.

“How are you, my boy? Did you get your old job
back ?”’

“No, Father.”

“Why not?”

“T don’t know, Father; they wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Were you active in the strike?”

“No, Father.”

“You didn’t stay around strike headquarters a lot?”

“No, Father; I was home.” )

“When you went for your job, what did they say to
you?”

“They said, “‘What’s your name?’ and when I told them
they said: ‘Nothing doing for you. Were not going to
have nothing but Americans in the chemical department
after this.””’ He had spoken in a quiet, lackluster voice,
and now bitterness broke out of him. “What makes an
American?” he demanded. “Wasn’t I born here? Weren't
all of us born here? Ain’t the boys like my brother Joe
who volunteered as good Americans, even if they have got
‘ski’ or ‘ko’ to their names—as good Americans as the
fellows called White or Smith? Ill say we are! They
said so too while the war was on. You remember the
poster “Americans all!’ Say, Father, the man who made
that picture ought to work in Carnegie Steel. He’d learn
the difference between an American and a ‘damn Hunky’
quick enough!”

Again there was nothing to say. We had no answer for
his bitterness. The thin rain fell on us. Tow-headed chil-
dren made a cheerful slide down the alley. An old woman,

178 Men and Steel

her head tied in a kerchief after the fashion of Central
Europe, toiled along, carrying a load of wood. A silence
as frozen as the rain held us. The boy broke the silence.

“What nationality do you suppose my little son is?”
he asked. “He is only the third generation here. I
guess he ain’t got any country.”

. We walked on down the bleak alley, with its swarming
tow-headed children who had found a plaything in the
brittle surface of the icy pavement. :

“That boy’s mother is a wonderful woman,” said
Father Kazinci. “She has eleven children, and each new
one as it comes along she shows to me as a gift from
- God.” We turned down a passageway which led down
hill into a courtyard. The courtyard was lined around
with smoke-blackened pens where the tenants kept hens
and animals. The heaps of filth defacing the court were
now covered with a thin purifying coating of ice. Five
paces from the front door, on a slightly higher level, stood
a privy common to several families. Near the door was
a bench, on which sat a row of fowls, like everything else,
shining with ice. Over the door projected three blackened
boards—a shelter from the burning sun, when the swelter-
ing court became a brick oven, but now cutting out what
little light there was. The brick house had been painted
light blue, which gave it a cheerful air.

A smell of old grease, of drying clothes, rushed fiercely
at us as we opened the basement door. A wide-bosomed
strong woman who rocked a cradle greeted us. She was
still comely, almost handsome. She broke into a torrent

Aliens 179

of greeting in her own tongue. Father Kazinci translated:

'“She says, ‘Father, you see me here in my bare feet
and my rags. I have been here twenty-two years, and I
live as you see. This is all I have—these rags, this cel-
lar, my eleven children. Every night I bless God, who has
kept them in good health. For twenty-two years, Father,
I have worked from morning till night, and often late
at night, but after all this work we have nothing to give
them but this.”

Striker’s Christmas

There were two small windows that did not open, and a
slit of a window high in the rear of the room. The door
opened flush on the soggy courtyard. In the room were
a stove, a table, four chairs, benches, and the inevitable
row of holy pictures. On the floor above the father and
mother slept in one room with the five younger children.
In the attic slept the four boys. Always there had been
a new baby. Before they could escape from this cellar
another baby always came.

Peter and Lisa, the babies now in the room, had come
the same year. John at thirteen had had to leave school
because other children were being born to the Savkos.

Lisa stood on the bench, her head silhouetted against
the window. In her hand she held two flat pieces of gum;
with these she made a cross against the window-pane, then
a T, then an angle, then she put them carefully in her
pinafore pocket. Then, tranquil, serious, absorbed, she

180 Men and Steel

looked at a book. She continued in her little world while
her mother talked.

Father Kazinci translated: ‘““Would I live here if I could
get out? Would I live here, would I remain where the
dirty water of the privy overfiows and crawls over the
court under the doorsill until it makes a pool on my
kitchen floor? Is that a view for children to look at
year after year, year after year? To keep them clean
I must wash out in the yard. Look, missus, this is my
apron!’’ She brought a stiff oilcloth apron, still frozen.
“I wash out in the cold, so I won’t splash water over my
children, so they can have a dry place to play. Eleven
souls to keep clean here in Braddock means work.”

She illustrated with wide gestures:

“On Christmas we were all here, Johnny and his. wife
and the baby. Father, you see this little room and this
small table, these few chairs? Fifteen souls. Some ate.
I cleared away. Others sat down. The little girls sat
on the stairs. Two boys used the black stove for a table.
The children laughed and were happy because there was _
goose and stuffing, but my heart was heavy. Must the
children eat from the floor like pigs even on this day of
our blessed Lord? It was no comfort to me that He was
born in.a manger. For this one day I would have short-
ened my life if only we might all of us, young and old,
have celebrated Christmas by éating together at one table.
I thought how beautiful if we could all have sat down at
once, each in his own chair, each with his own plate and
knife and fork, on this one holiday. What happiness!”

Aliens 181
A Worker’s Story

The woman’s arms had always been full of babies. You
could have told that by the way she gathered up Lisa while
she went on with her story.

There was in the story one green spot of delight. Once
she and her husband had $180 saved. They had gone to
Holyoke and visited a sister. They would have stayed, but
there was no work for the father to do. That had been
eighteen years before, but the memory of the wide Con-
necticut Valley and the sweet New England towns still
gladdened her heart.

The children began coming in from school. They
dragged a little table out from underneath the big table
-and sat about it, playing. Happiness survived in this
meager room. It was a home made abidingly good by
that woman. Here people were kind to one another. The
little girls played together quietly with the harmony of
children accustomed only to love.

The boys came in. The baby waked up. The mother
took him in her arms. The window was a luminous square
of dark blue. She sat there, silhouetted against it, enor-
mous, her head erect in the defense of her own. As the
dusk deepened the children came to her, crowding them-
selves into her flanks. The three little girls stood on one
side, Steve next, and then George.

She was talking: “Ah, my dears, that was a terrible time
—yes, yes, that was the time! That was the time! De .
Spair stared at me. Despair was stronger than God’s hand.

182 Men and Steel

Despair walked at night beside me. They laid him off
_ -—they laid off our father! We were on strike just now,
but it was the company that was striking then! I had
Annie in my arms, another coming, seven mouths to feed!
- What can I do? I sat one day for six hours in the
boss’s office. ‘I will stay on my knees here, I thought,
‘antil he takes our father back. Even if it is a slack
time, there is some work they must give him to do, I
thought. : |

“It was at that time I used to buy rags from the rag-
-man—the rags the Americans had thrown away—and
wash them clean and patch them and make clothes for the
babies. What else could I do?

“Johnnie found himself work at night, so he could study
at day. For a year until he was fourteen he held the red
hot links of chains in a pincers from five o'clock at night
until three in the morning, but the hot metal hurt his eyes.
His eyes were always red, but he would not give up. You
remember, Father, he did this for a year. He would
fall asleep over his books, poor boy!

“Oh, my dear, misfortune has followed me from the
day I left my own land. One misfortune after another.
Now it is Stevie who must set up pins in the bowling
alley from six till half-past eleven at night.”

“IT get five dollars,’ said Stevie.

“How could I help it, Father?” the woman continued.
“It is always the same, so many mouths to fill.” She looked
at us with her extraordinary intensity and cried out:
“Would to God I had never come! Would to God I had

Aliens 183

never seen this land! Would to God I had remained
where, if we had no school, we might have had the blue
sky and the fields! What good does it do them—the few
days of schooling? With them it is a thirst and a hunger
for knowledge, and I must see them starve for the knowl-
edge they cannot have. What is the meaning, Father?
Why should things be so?”

The door opened, and Johnnie came in. Upstairs the
father and Andy, the third son, were sleeping—both on
the night shift. They’ were all gathered under one roof
now, this family of aliens who had lived among us for
twenty-three years in so precarious a fashion. John spoke.

“Father,” he said, “I found out the name of the Amer-
ican fellow who got my job.” He spoke without irony.
“It was O’Rourke.”

They Want to Go Home

There are thousands of women who echo this cry:
“Would to God I had never come!” There are thousands
of men and women homesick for their own lands; and they
are going as fast as steamships will take them. The emi-
gration officials, the officials of steamship companies, the
priests, will all tell you so.

The easy answer to this is: “Well, if they don’t like it
here, let them go.” But the wheels of industry do not
turn of themselves. They grind the raw products of this
country into wealth because we have had plenty of for-
eign workers to turn the wheels. We need the workers.

184 | Men and Steel

Textile mill, mine, and steel mills recruit them in their
ewn countries. ;

Now the homesick people from Central Europe are go-
ing back to their lands. They have been cut off from their
families for years. They are taking with them strange
memories and strange stories—memories of mounted con-
stabulary chasing workers. from streets, memories of raids
and of arrests, memories of mothers and children crying
about a vanished father.

Many steel workers are going home to tell their friends
that the government of America is against the workers.
There are thousands upon thousands who learned to be-
lieve last winter that this is a government for rich men.

On their return home these emigrants will tell the stories
of raids, imprisonments and deportations for political rea-
sons. And they will tell them in every hamlet in Italy;
they will be told in the Balkans and in Central Europe out
to the Baltic Sea. These stories will lose nothing by the
telling. Those who listen will believe that America is a
land of despotism where an unbridled brutality is per-
mitted to the police.

As long as exchange is high there will be a backward
flow of foreign workers. Instead of people coming as to a -
promised land, the immigrants will come in a suspicious
and hostile frame of mind. Instead of settlers we will
have gold seekers.

Aliens 185
They Will Wait

Weeks after the strike was over I walked again down
Braddock’s alleys. The outward flow had set in. Many
of my acquaintances had gone back to their own countries.
The derelict old man, whose son had died ef rage, had
gone. The family was scattered. |

There were no outward changes. The women’s cur-
tains were still drying on frames. The children played in
the litter. Smoke rolled down the valley. Gusts of white
steam arose behind the mill walls.

A woman was sitting beside her door with a child in
her arms, another playing at her feet. Her mild eyes
gazed on vacancy, as though not seeing the monotony of
the squalid street that ended with the red cylinders of the
mills, vast structures rearing their monstrous tank-like
bulk far into the air and above which rolled the somber
magnificence of the smoke.

The woman had the patience of eternity in her broad
quiet face.

“I have waited,” she seemed to say. “I am eternal.
This strife is about me and mine. If my brothers do
not change this, my sons will. I can wait.”

THE BND

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